


Physical Conditioning

by silvercistern



Series: Personal Enrichment [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Akaashi's Weird Dick, Communication, Happy Birthday darling, M/M, Sexual exploration, intimacy issues, stuttering character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-10 15:29:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12914805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvercistern/pseuds/silvercistern
Summary: “I want you to teach me to be better. At sex. Sex with you,” Keiji said firmly. “I don’t particularly care about being better at sex in general,” he added in case Koutarou was worried.He wasn’t but it had been really sweet anyway.Keiji Akaashi sucks in bed. And not in a good way.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey hey hey it’s a year late, but here’s the sequel to character development. hope you enjoy!

“But _Keiji_ ,” Koutarou whined, “I had extra practice this week! And then Oikawa and Iwazumi had a fight and I had to help them out, and then Yukie had a party and I talked a bunch with this cool girl there… only I didn’t realize it until we met up the next day that it was a _date_. I had to like, tell her that I had a boyfriend and it took a long time for her to believe me so I just… didn’t have time to look at your edits. Plus, I uh, worked so hard on studying for my history test I kinda forgot how to do the stuff you taught me so I need help again anyway.”

Keiji narrowed his eyes as he glared at the screen, mouthing what looked like the words “thirty-seven”. 

“I did look over your problem sets though!” Koutarou remembered, shuffling around the mess that was his desk. “Didja get the paper I scanned? The librarian showed me how. She had purple hair, did you know that librarians could have purple hair cause I didn’t thin—”

“Yes,” Keiji interrupted him, probably since he knew like ten librarians with rainbow hair colors. “Seeing as every single problem I did was wrong I was hoping for some direction, as this is the final study guide for my six-week intensive statistics course. Although feel free to describe your date instead.”

That was not what it was and Koutarou knew that Keiji was just being a brat because he was worried about getting a good grade but Koutarou couldn’t let that stand. “Keiji! You know you’re the only one for me! It was an accident! Anyway, there’s a thing you keep doing over and over again with like, limits? But if you fix it you’ll get them all right.”

“I could say the same for you.” 

“You mean with those gregorical wallaties?”

“Rhetorical fallacies, yes…” he kinda trailed off, and bit his lip before he looked back at the camera like he was ready to fight it.

“Koutarou, there is something else we need- we need to discuss. I thought about waiting until we were face to face, but,” he swallowed, “it is urgent.”

Just like that Keiji’s face didn’t really have a color anymore. He looked scared.

“Um, okay?” It was pretty hard for Koutarou to not feel scared himself.

The green of Keiji’s eyes never looked right on the screen of Koutarou’s old Dell laptop. But he stared into the not-quite-right eyes until Keiji finally took a deep breath and spoke.

“I l-love you. I’ve known for some t…..ime, but I needed to work through some anxieties before I could tell you.”

The color on Keiji’s face was back and had brought a lot of pretty pink friends. A whole lot of niceness to think about, but Koutarou couldn’t really, because he was pissed.

“Don’t say that!!!”

“Oh.” Keiji’s fingers were twisting around each other under his chin. “You’d said that you felt the- felt the same. I…”

“You can’t just say it for the first time like that!” Koutarou screeched. He jumped out of his chair to pace around his room, ranting to himself because this just wasn’t fair! “I want to kiss you, and hug you, and I can’t! And you’re all blushy and cute and… _that’s it_ , I’m getting in the truck, and I’m gonna drive down there right now.”

Keiji didn’t look scared anymore, but the pretty pink was still there.

“Do not do that,” he said, frowning so he didn’t smile.

“I’d like to see you stop me!” Koutarou struggled to put on his pants.

“We both have courses to finish — you so you can keep your spot on the team. I won’t let you in, even though I’ll want to. It will be very frustrating for both of us. And also my roommate when he returns.”

Koutarou slumped on his desk. “ _This_ is frustrating for the both of us, Akaaaaseee,” he moaned with a lot less of a whine than normal.

Keiji sighed then swallowed. He looked like he felt real bad, and he hardly ever looked like that. “I apologize. I should have waited. I just…”

“Couldn’t hold it in?” Koutarou perked up. “Cause you love me so much?”

The grumpy face was almost as cute as the pouty one.

“Once the week ends, I’ll be home for the rest of the summer,” Keiji cleared his throat. “Then we can talk more about this, and address the other thing I’d like to discuss.”

“What other thing?” How was he supposed to wait that long?

Keiji took a deep breath and looked straight ahead, calm and solid as usual.

“If you’re interested, I’d like us to begin a sexual relationship.”

 

It was hard to edit a stupid paper when you didn’t care about it. It was even harder to edit it when the person who was helping you get it done had just said he loved you for the first time. Instead of making the stupid edits, Koutarou found himself responding to Keiji’s Google doc comments with hearts and paraphrased quotes from romantic songs that he liked.

Keiji deleted them (or worse, _edited_ them), because he was a monster who didn’t believe in love.

Only… he _did!_

So Koutarou wrote new comments, snickering to himself, until Keiji refused to help anymore.

But even though he only got half the help he expected, he passed freshman writing with a C. His final paper was about revising the US reparations to Native Hawai’ians. Koutarou was generally happy to pat himself on the back for any and all achievements, but still, he was pretty sure that it was the topic itself (and the sources his mom had sent him) that got him the grade, not his writing.

Western Civ he did better, with a B-. Coach nearly cried when he stopped by his office to tell him that he could play in the fall.

Unlike Keiji — who was with his mom to pack his dorm and drive the hour and a half home — Koutarou sold his books and walked back to his place alone.

He found Teru and Hana opening their most recent batch of that weird mold tea. It smelled really bad, like rotten eggs. Most of the hippie stuff they did smelled bad, so Koutarou was used to it. But Hana slipped, and the huge jar shattered all over the floor. It took the rest of the afternoon cleaning it up before he realized that the smell could get in other parts of the house.

The damage was already done, though. Koutarou’s bedroom door had been open and it smelled pretty rough. He didn’t wanna have any kind of romantic, sexy time in a rotten egg room.

Although, maybe it was okay that his room smelled. The closer Keiji got to being home, the more worries came up. While Koutarou was happy to love Keiji until his squishy cheeks were pink and happy and he made that grumpy face that meant the exact opposite of being grumpy, he didn’t know if he was ready to _love_ him.

It wasn’t like he didn’t think about the two of them having sex pretty much forty times a day. Always. No matter what he was doing. Every attractive person of any gender was Keiji. Every time he touched himself, there was some version of Keiji helping out. Koutarou hadn’t gone this long without banging someone in about three years, so it wasn’t surprising he really, really, really wanted to have sex with somebody he was actually in love with.

But he’d never had sex with anybody he’d loved before. He’d never even loved anyone before, not like this. Koutarou could definitely make it good for him; he could absolutely rock Keiji’s world. But it was Keiji, so things had to be special.

Super special. Rock his universe special.

But it would not be special to do it at Keiji’s house in his tiny bed, while his mom, and Kuroo, and Kozume were all hanging around. They’d have to do it in Koutarou’s room. And his room was nice, with the king size bed and all the sick plants from work that he’d nursed back to life. Not only was it bigger and prettier (when he cleaned it up), but Hana and Teru were leaving to spend the rest of the summer in Austin. So the whole house was private.

 _And_ since it smelled like rotten eggs, Koutarou had time to figure out a rock-Keiji’s-universe game plan.

 

The first thing he saw when he pulled up to the house was Keiji’s hair. It was longer. The second thing he saw was Keiji’s ass and that was all Keiji’s fault because he’d said all that stuff. No, that was not a good way to think about things. More accurately (and less rapey), he always wanted to look at Keiji’s ass, but now it felt like Keiji wanted him to too.

The owner of one of the top five asses in the country was just standing in front of the open door to his house, probably talking to his mom. It was hard to say, there were always a lot of people in there. Not as many as back home, but still enough to feel homey.

Koutarou slammed the truck door behind him and Keiji turned, arms full of pillows. They looked at each other for a minute. Six weeks had been a long time; Keiji had somehow gotten prettier, which took a second to take in. After he did, Koutarou started to run. Keiji knew exactly how long it would take him to reach the porch, apparently, because he sat down the pillows on a box just before Koutarou picked him up and spun him around.

“Are you always going to do that?” he asked, in that bored but not really bored voice.

Koutarou didn’t answer because he was busy kissing him. He tasted like apple juice and peachy rings and nothing healthy at all. He wanted to kiss the peachy ring out of his mouth and feed him a healthy lunch. And then he forgot about all of that because Keiji’s fingers were on the nape of his neck and Keiji’s mom was on the landing.

“Sweetheart, please help Keiji move his things up to his room. I don’t care what you do with him once you’ve got him up there, but our neighbors are starting to take photographs.”

Dr. Akaashi was the kind of lady you wanted your daughter to grow up to be, and also the kind of lady you didn’t want to piss off. Sort of like his own mom, only in a crazy different way.

“Sorry,” he dropped Keiji, kind of forgetting it was a person he was dropping. He would have fallen on his ass, but Koutarou caught him, because he was an awesome boyfriend with sweet moves. Dr. Akaashi went inside. Koutarou moved to pick up all the boxes at once when Keiji caught him by the shirt and turned him around.

“I love you,” he said, kind of like he was ordering a pizza he wasn’t hungry for. Except he wouldn’t be blushing so much at the pizza man. Or maybe he would if the pizza man was Koutarou but he did not have time to think all of that out because Keiji was kissing him his way now, which was soft and sneaky and ended up really wild.

“I love you too,” Koutarou kind of yelled back, though pizza wasn’t really involved.

As fast as he’d grabbed him, Keiji let him go, picked up the pillows and two boxes and sauntered into the house.

Sauntered.

A word Koutarou did not even realize he knew until he saw it happen.

 

The first thing Keiji had done when they’d gotten into his room was wedge a chair under the doorknob that led to the bathroom. The second thing he’d done was back Koutarou up into the bedroom door, locking it right next to his hip. He bit a tiny, tiny piece of his bottom lip and tilted his head back just a little to look into Koutarou’s eyes.

The way he was just going for it was doing a lot for the boner that Koutarou was trying not to get. 

Even though they were rich people, Keiji still had an extra-long single bed. It was big enough for a tall guy, but not big enough for two tall guys. But there were two tall guys there, because Keiji pushed him down and straddled him. The boner that Koutarou really wanted to save for later was doing the exact opposite, probably because Keiji was sitting on it.

“Have you considered what I said?” he asked, mostly with his lowered eyelids.

Koutarou slid his hands up Keiji’s arms until he was grabbing his lean biceps. He really liked Keiji’s arms. They were like, well, he didn’t know what to compare them to. Long, and kind of… whippy? That didn’t sound right. Whatever they were like they looked great and the stretchy muscles felt nicer than his own, even if they definitely couldn’t lift half as much.

“Thought you were smart, _ku`u lei_ ,” he ran his thumbs across the creases in Keiji’s bicep. “You should know I haven’t been able to stop thinkin’ about it.”

“I meant that more as a conversation starter, and less as an actual question,” Keiji leaned down and crossed his arms on Koutarou’s chest. The entire process involved a lot of grinding that his boner thought was really great, but might have been a little much.

“Say it again, then,” Koutarou slid his fingers through Keiji’s sloppy curls. When he leaned into the touch just a little, Koutarou was pretty certain he knew what winning a million dollars felt like. Maybe Keiji’d do that little blush again, and tell him that he—

“I want to have sex with you.”

Or maybe he’d go for the throat.

 

“If you’re not ready, I don’t mean to pressure you,” Keiji said from his desk chair. He was sitting so straight he was gonna break his spine in half.

Koutarou and his boner shared the bed. Neither really knew what to say, since the idea of “ready” was kind of funny and complicated, as it was something both of them pretty much screamed all the time.

Keiji waited, then tried again, “I had assumed that I had made you wait longer than you wanted.”

Well so, part of him had wanted to see what Keiji looked like naked and cumming within the first minute he’d seen him, so the question was kinda hard to respond to without sounding like a nightmare person. Which he kinda was, maybe.

“I mean I’m used ta hookin’ up right away,” he said, independent of his dick, “but you’re special, so I wasn’t in a rush.”

Keiji adjusted himself and made a little huffy, hurt face. Like most of his faces, he didn’t really know about it; he thought he didn’t have an expression at all. And maybe most other people didn’t notice, but Koutarou wasn’t most people.

“Well, Bokuto, despite your singular lack of urgency…”

_shit shit shit shit_

“…it is something I would very much like to do.”

“Akaaaaaashi! It’s not like I didn’t wanna! I just wanted it to be real special for you! And, before we did I wanted you to tell me that you, y’know....”

The huffy face got soft and pretty pink.

“I’m hardly a virgin,” Keiji turned to look at something that wasn’t very important on his desk.

“Well I’m _more_ hardly,” Koutarou’s dick finally got a word in edgewise, if only to brag. “I mean! Just… I don’t wanna do it sneaking around when your brother and mom can hear. And walk in! I’ve walked in on somebody in this house! I don’t want somebody walkin’ in on me!”

Keiji relaxed into that tiny, tiny little smile that meant he thought he was being super smart. Because he probably was.

“My mother is going on a date on Saturday night. She told us to plan on her returning in the morning. Tetsurou will be working second shift. Kenma is currently in France.”

“Oh.”

“A golden opportunity,” the pretty pink was turning a cute red as Keiji swallowed, “if you’ve grown- grown tired of waiting.” 

 

The next few days went kind of the same. Koutarou woke up before the sun to work at the greenhouse. While he was there he thought about volleyball. Mostly. He also thought about Keiji’s face, and how funny he was when he didn’t realize it, and how he had secret little smiles, and how he made him feel so calm. He also thought about making the veins in Keiji’s neck stand out when he’d arch off the bed, cumming all over himself.

Then he went to practice, where he thought about nothing but volleyball the whole time. If you could double think about the same thing, that was how much he thought about volleyball. After that he aired out his rotten egg house while he played video games with friends from home. Sometimes Tsukishima or Kozume joined in, depending on the game. He hadn’t realized Kozume was in France, seeing as he was still gaming, but it made sense in a way.

So now those two were friends with his friends back home, which was cool. But them knowing each other meant they all made fun of Koutarou in game because he kept dying. He didn’t suck as much as they thought, but he couldn’t really defend himself. He was dying because he kept thinking about Keiji, and he couldn’t very well tell them that. So after dying like two hundred times, he’d drive to Torrance to pick Keiji up from work.

Keiji did not like to be picked up from work. He especially did not like it when Koutarou arrived early and caught him in his cute little apron and hat, making frappuccinos for giggling customers. They thought he was beautiful, and most of them were boys. More than anything Keiji disliked when Koutarou swaggered past those boys, ordered something for himself, and then said he couldn’t wait till his shift was over so they could go home together. Keiji always spelled his name wrong on the cup in revenge. Bukutoo. But those boys knew that Bukutoo was the one taking the pretty barista home. Keiji _really_ disliked that.

But he did seem to like kissing on his bed after.

They’d kissed before. There’d been weeks between the prom and Keiji’s smart-kid summer courses where they’d gone on like a billion dates, seeing all the places where Koutarou had wanted to go and all the LA stuff that Keiji wanted to show him. They’d sat in the Getty gardens and talked for like, three hours one afternoon. This one time Keiji had taken him to this completely creepy museum about terassic technology or something. They’d also just hung out, playing two on two volleyball with Kuroo and Kozume, or watching stupid movies, or even with Koutarou sleeping on Keiji’s lap while he read books or wrote with his laptop on Koutarou’s chest.

But thanks to Teru’s terrible houseguests, Kuroo’s grandparents visiting from San Francisco, and a cat destroying the truck mattress, there hadn’t been a lot of makeout opportunities. It was more like sneaky kisses on the living room couch before Mr. and Mrs. Kuroo came down from the spare bedroom and asked a _million_ questions. They’d go to movies and end up surrounded by little kids. Mostly they’d just parked in secluded places at night and made out in the cab of the truck. But they were both tall and that hadn’t worked too well.

But now Dr. Akaashi and Kuroo were usually away working in the early afternoons. It wasn’t that scary, being caught just making out anyway, so they took advantage of the time. If they were going to have sex and it was going to be special, Koutarou needed to be damn sure he knew what he was doing.

At first they kept all their clothes on and just rolled around, kissing and touching in ways they hadn’t gotten a chance to before. After figuring out how Keiji liked to be kissed, Koutarou took their shirts off. Or tried. Keiji didn’t really respond when he was asked, he just sat up, pulled Koutarou’s shirt over his head, and pulled him back down, his own still on. Confusing, but the soft grazing touches against Koutarou’s nipples made it hard to wonder about it for long. 

A few days later Keiji all but ripped off Koutarou’s shorts. Then he peeled off his own tight jeans. They ended up grinding against each other in just their underwear and that was really hot. He could feel the outline of Keiji’s dick against his own which was something there wasn’t really a word to describe. They had to stop every thirty seconds for Keiji’s sake and Koutarou nearly bit his tongue off to keep from bragging about it.

There were some things that he noticed, though.

No matter how much they rubbed against each other, Keiji still kept his shirt on. Even though Koutarou had no idea why he did it, it was really kinda sexy, his long legs and the edges of his short black briefs sticking out of his long t-shirt. He wondered about it, but he kept forgetting to ask about it when they weren’t in the middle of things.

Another thing: Keiji always ended up on his back. Sometimes his legs were crossed behind Koutarou’s thighs, sometimes his long fingers were grabbing at his ass, but Keiji was always on his back, arms around Koutarou’s neck, while he explored the softness of Keiji’s neck, the sharpness of his collarbones, the give of his thick thighs, and the sweet huffy breaths and strangled groans he made when their cocks rubbed together.

They never went so far as to get each other off. Koutarou kind of wanted to wait. Keiji spent so much effort keeping himself from cumming that it seemed like he wanted to as well.

But on Friday, Keiji came by accident. In his shorts, right after Koutarou told him he needed to behave himself. Koutarou was so mad that his face had been buried in Keiji’s neck instead of _seeing_ Keiji’s face that he could have broken the bed frame in half.

“Give me a minute,” Keiji panted, the pink going all the way out to his ears and down his neck and probably even around his nipples. Koutarou desperately wanted to see Keiji’s nipples. He imagined they were dark, like the rest of him, and got even darker when they puckered up and stuck out. He wanted to bite them and kiss them but he couldn’t, because Keiji wanted to wear a shirt. And he was going to respect that. So he laid down on the pillow next to his panting boyfriend and touched the soft inside of his elbow until Keiji turned his head and looked at him.

His eyes were glossy, and the green was almost gone, just dark black pools that kept hiding behind his long eyelashes. They were smiling, his eyes, turned up just a little bit in the corners. The pink still flooded his cheeks and, most wonderful of all, a small half-smile was burying itself in the pillow.

“I love you,” Keiji gasped for breath. He sounded a little drunk, but also like he meant it.

Koutarou came untouched in his boxers like a fourteen-year-old.

 

Since there was no way to fit any of Keiji’s underwear over his ass, Koutarou rinsed his out, put them in a plastic bag, and went commando. Not great. When he came back into the room, Keiji was mostly dressed, and sitting stiff on his desk chair.

“I want to talk about to-tomorrow night.”

For some reason, Koutarou felt really nervous about it, so he did what he always did when he was nervous: he said everything that was on his mind.

“Well, I showed you those papers from when I got tested, and I’m all clean, and I mean, you already told me too. Also I can bring lube and condoms I have a lot, all different kinds, and okay maybe that’s not something you wanna think about I dunno I mean–”

“I’ve never been on the bottom before,” Keiji interrupted.

Koutarou’s dick twitched and he wanted to punch it. “Oh! Well, I have plenty of times, even with a few girls, ya know, so I’d really like that. You’ll be on top, any way you want, Keiji.”

Keiji coughed a little, which was mostly a laugh, and Koutarou figured maybe admitting to getting pegged was sort of uncomfortable. It had been hot though; he wasn’t embarrassed, even if Keiji thought it was weird.

“I meant,” Keiji made eye contact, the kind that was hard to look away from. “I want to be on the bottom tomorrow. But I imagine that mi……ght take some preparation, considering it’s my first—”

“No.”

He hadn’t meant to say it like that but he wasn’t going to take it back, either. Keiji blinked fast, which meant he was pretty close to pissed.

“I mean I, um, want you to,” Koutarou backtracked. He couldn’t look at him, which meant he kept accidentally looking and Keiji’s mouth was a long, flat line, “but… you’ve felt what I’ve got goin’ on down there. I’ll fucking hurt you and then you’ll pretend I didn’t, even though it’s obvious and I’ll cry and it’ll be the opposite of what it should be like for you.”

There was a weird sound, and then Keiji’s knee bumped against his. He’d rolled the chair across the floor so they were face to face.

“I’m not the only person involved,” he scowled, but it was a sweet scowl.

“Okay well I still don’t wanna hurt you. This is important to me too! I’ve never, ya know, been with anybody I was in love with.”

He grabbed Keiji’s hand and squeezed it before he started doing that thing with his fingers. After what felt like an hour of tense handholding, Keiji ran his thumb across Koutarou’s skin.

“What do you suggest we do, then?” he kept each of the words in his mouth a second too long, cause he was trying really hard not to stutter.

“Can I fuck your thighs?” Koutarou leaned forward and grinned eagerly. “I mean, have you seen them? Jesus christ I think about it all the time.”

Keiji narrowed his eyes.

“And then, or before or whatever, I mean… I’m not saying this to brag or anything, but I’m pretty certain I could um… you know, finger you till you get off. Plus, it’d get you used to… things. Has anybody ever–”

“No one but myself,” Keiji held up three of his extremely long fingers, and Koutarou swallowed hard. “It didn’t work.”

“So you two never…” He knew he was supposed to be jealous of Ennoshita. But mostly he just felt bad for him because he wasn’t dating Keiji anymore. Although he was dating that guy with the buzzcut. But that guy was not Keiji.

“I’ve never been involved in prostate stimulation in any aspect. We rarely had penetrative sex and when we did, I was on top. Our intimacy was in no way unsatisfying, but I would like to diversify my experience.”

“Agaaaaaaasee, is that all this is?”

Keiji climbed onto his lap and glared at him. But he was blushing underneath. “Do you really think that, Bo.ku.to? Is it so hard to believe that I want you be the first man to fuck me?”

 

When you really sat and thought about it, four different kinds of lube was overkill. But Koutarou hadn’t sat and thought about it. He’d offered to bring the stuff, but put off thinking about it until the last minute. Which meant that he didn’t make good choices. He also brought condoms, rubber gloves, a cock ring, and an actual vibrator, none of which he had any specific intentions of using.

Then he pretended he hadn’t brought them until they fell out of his bag and all over the floor.

But that was getting ahead of the situation.

While he was driving he’d wondered just who Dr. Akaashi was going on a date with. He figured for someone so pretty and smart it was probably like, a pro athlete, or an actor or somebody. Then he tried to think about Kuroo at work making dick shapes out of pills to distract himself, but that was only funny for like two seconds.

The rest of his time was focused on Keiji. Luckily, the ride that normally seemed to take forever suddenly was really short, so he didn’t have to focus too long. He didn’t quite know why he was so nervous. He knew how to have sex. He was damn good at it. He knew what Keiji liked, at least from when they’d been fooling around. He could probably figure out the heavier stuff.

But god he was so nervous.

The bottom dropped out of his stomach when Keiji opened his door looking like the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. He was wearing his tightest jeans, the black ones. Over that he had one of those long t-shirts, that hung over his collarbone if he moved a certain way. This one was white, but underneath was this kinda black sheer thing. It was tight with sleeves that cut off at the shoulder. It looked like it might be a sexy thing.

Koutarou felt three hundred percent more nervous.

“Your clothes are quite extravagant for someone who isn’t going to be dressed for long,” Keiji said smoothly, stepping back so Koutarou could come inside.

It hadn’t been much. He’d just gotten a real good tip from lugging things from the nursery to an event that had rented live plants as decorations. After that he’d begged Shirofuku to let him use her discount at the weird hip place where she worked. Well, more like, for her to pick out “fancy not fancy” clothes for him. Because honestly, shorts and a tank top was all he ever wanted so he didn’t know how to pick. With her help he’d gotten one pair of dark orange skinny… pants (they’d been on clearance), a t-shirt with some weird-looking owl on it, and a brown vest. He still wasn’t sure about the vest. Either way, it looked real good, but the whole thing cost more than his entire prom night had two months ago.

Even though he was teasing, Keiji seemed to like it. But he wasn’t gonna say so because he was a little jerk sometimes.

“Yeah, I look pretty hot, huh?” Koutarou said it for him, glancing up from the floor where he was untying his chucks. Keiji was staring at his thigh, for some reason. The minute he stood up, Keiji pushed him against the wall, his long leg pressed against Koutarou’s crotch.

“I didn’t think you knew how to dress yourself.”

“I don’t. Guess you’re gonna have to do it later.”

It was maybe one of the two pieces of witty banter Koutarou had ever come up with and he was almost as surprised as Keiji was about it. Only almost. Keiji’s sleepy eyes opened all the way, and then relaxed until he was smiling like an actual murderer.

A sexy murderer, but a murderer.

“I suppose you’ll have to do it for me… then,” he said.

Koutarou wasn’t sure what that meant, and as it turned out, neither did Keiji because his ears turned red and he pulled Koutarou up the stairs into his room. Right after the door shut behind them was when the bag of stuff fell all over the floor, the vibrator rolling to rest against Keiji’s big toe.

“Change of plans?” he lifted his eyebrows.

Picking him up and throwing him on the bed was the only way to avoid complete humiliation. Keiji bounced once, then Koutarou fell on him. He already knew what it felt like when they were pressed together, Keiji’s lithe (he’d looked up the word for his muscles) body wiggling underneath Koutarou’s broader, harder chest. But that didn’t make it any less exciting. It really was kind of stupid how much money he’d spent on clothes, because the way things had started out he wasn’t gonna wear them long. But it didn’t take long for him not to care.

Keiji’s mouth always tasted like something sweet, like ice cream or sour candy or soda. If he hadn’t seen Keiji inhale a bowl of mustard greens in less than a minute, Koutarou would have been worried about his diet. He’d had asked once what his own mouth tasted like and Keiji had told him it was a secret. He kissed Koutarou like he could only stand little tastes of the secret at once, biting and sucking at his lips instead.

Keiji stopped the kissing almost immediately, pulling himself toward the headboard and pushing Koutarou back so that he was on his knees. Then his hand was on his own fly and Koutarou reached forward to help, but Keiji put his hand on his chest and pushed him back a second time.

His zippers were always really loud. Now that Bokuto had tight pants of his own, he thought that maybe it had something to do with the tension. There was probably some sort of physics guy who could come up with a zipper equation. But he wasn’t a physics guy; that shit was confusing as hell. Anyway, Keiji opened his fly slowly, loudly, then slid down his pants, his feet accidentally (or maybe not), rubbing up against the inside of Koutarou’s thighs.

His underwear were black, and still technically boxer briefs, but they were tighter and shorter and definitely new and Koutarou was staring at them, well the bulge in them, and was he allowed to stare? He’d kind of never been in a position to stare before. God, they looked so hot, and Keiji was like three quarters hard already and now that he was looking he could see for certain that he was cut and he wanted to see all of it and was he allowed to stare?

Thanks to his uncertain guilt, he looked up just in time to see Keiji grab the hem of his shirt and pull it over his head.

Keiji’s nipples were dark, that was obvious even through the weird but almost impossibly sexy sheer shirt he was wearing. They tightened up into even darker little nubs right as Koutarou was staring at them. The rest of his chest was kind of the way he’d imagined, soft, just a little bit sculpted, with a few faint lines running down and across his stomach. He could see the muscles move as Keiji took in deep breaths, which maybe he was doing because he was nervous, or turned on, or…

“Are you plan-planning on taking off your clothes?” he demanded.

Koutarou got stuck in his vest, then couldn’t unzip his pants, then fell off the bed in the process of pulling them off. When he finally climbed back up, Keiji’s long fingers grabbed the hem of his shirt and yanked it off, getting Koutarou’s arms stuck behind him.

Was he allowed to laugh? He wanted to laugh because this was fucking funny but he wasn’t sure if he could. Keiji swallowed then reached around to free his arms. He didn’t look like he was laughing at all so Koutarou coughed a lot instead.

There was a long, awkward pause. And Koutarou wanted to fill it with some kind of joke, but he was supposed to be rocking Keiji’s universe. He suddenly realized that what he knew about awesome sex had mostly only been applied to sex with people he hadn’t cared about very much.

He could feel himself starting to panic, which was complicated because the person who calmed him down was also the source of the panic right now.

So he did the only thing that really felt comfortable in the moment, and that was to push Keiji back into the pillow, kiss him as hard as he could, and slide his hand up his leg until he was just nearly touching his dick.

Keiji gasped like he had a plan but it had been ruined.

“This okay?” Koutarou said into his mouth, skimming his fingers everywhere but where Keiji wanted.

“Y-yeah.” Keiji’s hands were already grasping at the comforter, which made Koutarou feel not nervous anymore at all.

He kissed down the sheer fabric of whatever the fuck it was that Keiji was wearing, until he reached the closest nipple and started to nibble at it just a little bit.

Keiji tried to say three words all at once, and mostly just made a strangled kind of noise.

“This okay?”

He got a very serious nod in response, so figured it was working out. With his free hand, he played with the other nipple. Keiji started making weird little chirping sounds every time Koutarou’s fingers grazed his dick.

Lifting his head until they were eye to eye, he asked, “What do you want me to do, Keiji?”

“That thing,” he didn’t really sound like himself, whispery and nervous and vague, “that thing you said you’d do.”

Koutarou moved his hands and sat up on his elbows. He couldn’t help but grin, “You mean, you want me to finger you?”

Keiji nodded.

“Can I suck you off too?”

“Oh _god_.”

“Is that a yeah?”

He knew it was a yeah, but Keiji just squirmed on the pillow for a while, until he figured out if he didn’t respond, Koutarou wasn’t doing anything.

“No, Koutarou,” he lifted himself up on his elbows, glaring for real, “please shove your fingers up my ass, but I draw the line at fellatio.”

Koutarou jumped off the bed to get the lube pretty quick after that.

Keiji was still on his back, fisting the comforter, in his tiny shorts and sexy shirt when Koutarou went back to the bed. He could see Keiji’s abs better standing up, and the way the sheer fabric stuck to his ribs. He could also tell that it wasn’t sheer in the back.

Sitting on the bed next to Keiji’s stomach, he leaned down and gave him a long kiss. He wasn’t even nibbling on his lips anymore, just kissing back lazy and slow.

“You ready for this, _ku'uipo_?” Koutarou asked, pulling back a little.

Keiji turned his head, his eyes black and out of focus. “P-please,” he cleared his throat trying to get his voice back to normal, “Koutarou.”

He shimmied down the bed until he could lift one of Keiji’s long, flexible legs and slide under it. Then he slid back out from under it because he had to take off Keiji’s underwear first. He sorta wished he could have seen him from behind in them, but he figured he’d get to another time. He hooked his fingers under the fabric, and tried to take them off in a sexy way, but they kind of got… stuck, so then his first actual skin to skin contact with Keiji’s dick was pulling it out of the way so he could take off his underwear.

Keiji gasped at the touch, so at least he’d liked it.

Bokuto slid the briefs down all the way to unhook them from a foot, then looked back, trying not to be too slow or fast about it and mostly just hurting his neck. Keiji wasn’t too thick, but he was longer than he’d thought, and very dark, like the skin of his nipples, except for the head, which flushed pink a little. His pubes were the curliest he’d ever seen, and hardly trimmed at all, which was kind of cute.

It definitely wasn’t the prettiest dick he’d seen, but it was Keiji’s so he liked it the most already.

He could see all the way up Keiji’s body as he crawled forward, his strong calves, thick thighs, and the rise of his hips because of his plush ass. His whole torso was moving up and down because he was breathing really hard. With every breath, his dick bounced against his belly, and Koutarou couldn’t help but stare at it.

“Is it weird?” Keiji asked, flat enough for there to be some kinda joke there.

Koutarou made eye contact, which was kind of funny, cause he had to look over his dick to do it. “Nah, it’s really nice. I mean, mine’s not cut like that, but it’s probably better like this.”

“You don’t remember asking me if I had a weird dick?”

Oh. “Oh! I forgot. But don’t worry, it’s really nice,” he scooted forward on his stomach and swirled his tongue around the tip. Keiji whimpered so loud, and the sound was so weird, but Koutarou liked it.

“Tastes pretty nice too,” he smooched the head then leaned down and started kissing every last inch of Keiji’s inner thighs. 

When he felt he’d done enough kissing, he squirted enough lube into his hand to fist somebody, and pressed his other palm on top to warm it all up. He had rolled onto his knees, either side of Keiji’s thighs bit up all to hell. There were three or four tiny drips of pre on Keiji’s stomach, and he was up on his elbows watching with big eyes.

“I would like it if you did something, Koutarou,” he said through clenched teeth. “Before my testicles fall off.”

He threw back his head and laughed, finally feeling like he could. “I’m not just gonna go for it until you’re real turned on. You gotta be relaxed.”

“I took a bath before you arrived, I was very relaxed. Now I’m the opposite.”

That was true. He was trembling.

“Cause you want it so bad. Not cause you’re nervous.”

“I am both.”

“Okay, well, uh…,” he lubed up the first three fingers of his left hand, “maybe take some deep breaths, or we could kiss some.”

He really wanted to do that actually.

“Not right now. I can take it. Please just, do it.”

Koutarou spread apart his thighs, just a little more, and slid his thumb over the darker pucker of skin.

The second his finger touched, Keiji did the opposite of relaxing. He kind of yelped.

Koutarou sat up all the way, and put his lubey hands on his knees, forgetting that they were lubey in the first place. They slid off and slammed into Keiji’s bruised up thighs, making him grunt in pain. 

“Sorry, sorry!” Koutarou laughed nervously. “Maybe we should try this later? I got enough lube here to give us both a real nice hand job.”

Keiji’s mouth was opening, about to say that he didn’t want to, that he wanted something bigger but Koutarou cut him off.

“I’m not going anywhere, you know? I wanna make you feel good in all kinda ways.”

“Let me do it,” Keiji sat up, looking more angry than turned on.

“What? But I—” but then Keiji’s hand was reaching into his boxers and grabbing on and it was a little rough and kind of dry but it was also Keiji and Koutarou didn’t mind if things were rough, not really, but he could maybe do without the friction. Yeah actually that was way too much and—

“Hey hey hey!” he grabbed Keiji’s wrists with his lubey hands. “Let’s uh… lay down?”

It took a little work, but eventually they were facing each other on the bed. Keiji was still wearing that shirt thing, and Koutarou’s boxers weren’t off, just kinda pulled down in the front. Keiji’d taken Koutarou’s hand, and he’d thought it was gonna be a soft sweet kind of thing, but really it was just to get a handful of lube.

He let go, and then started jerking them.

Koutarou wanted to kiss him, because he loved to kiss him and now was the time for kissing, but Keiji wasn’t really kissing him back when he tried. He was focused on their dicks, panting pretty hard while he worked them over. His fingers were so long and that meant he could get both of them in one hand pretty easy but the grip was all wrong, too tight and too loose all at once and maybe it was because he was cut, but he only went to the tip on every third swipe and that just wasn’t enough. And Koutarou didn’t know what he could do to make this better and he was getting more and more nervous because he didn’t feel like he could just say it wasn’t enough even though it really wasn’t.

But when it was right it was so right, and Koutarou hissed and moaned hoping that maybe Keiji would pick up on that and keep doing that same thing but he didn’t seem to notice. His eyebrows were furrowed like he was trying to unscrew a really tight jar and Koutarou’s dick wasn’t a jar it was just kind of…

_Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck._

“Why are you…” Keiji asked what Koutarou’s brain was screaming.

“What?” Koutarou reached his hands out to take Keiji’s face in them to distract him from his shrinking dick. “What? It’s fine, just… got distracted!”

“Y…you got… _distracted_?” 

Okay that had been a really bad choice.

Keiji pulled his hand away from his halfway limp dick and stared at it.

“What was I doing- I doing wrong?” he asked softly.

This was not the way things were supposed to be going. Koutarou really definitely wanted to die.

“Nothing! I was just nervous!” he yelped, pulling up his boxers over his pathetic excuse for a penis. The last part of that wasn’t a lie but the first part was and he didn’t want to make Keiji upset. They just needed to talk a little more about what they liked and—

Wiping his lubey hand on his thigh, Keiji looked into Koutarou’s eyes.

“You’re lying,” he said.

 

Things went downhill from there.

So downhill that Koutarou ended up back in his truck with his bag of weird sex shit and hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. He had to go home, he had to get out of there, but as soon as the door had closed behind him he’d started to cry. He hadn’t meant that Keiji wasn’t paying attention, but it had come out like that and then he’d thrown him out looking cold and terrible and Koutarou had ruined _everything._

He made it home somehow, listening to the news really, really loud and thinking about all the terrible things in the world all at once. If this had been a normal day, he could knock on Teru and Hana’s door, even if it were late, and they’d come out and make some tea that didn’t smell like rotten eggs and put some ice on his neck and listen to him until he calmed down.

But they were gone and Kuroo was working and Keiji would die if his brother knew anyway.

So got the ice himself and called his mom.

He didn’t tell her what had happened, just that he and Keiji had had a fight. And she listened because she was good at listening, and told him he hadn’t ruined everything because she was good at saying that too. She told him about how his brother and sisters were doing, and how his stepdad was doing. She talked about the island, and the stories she was collecting. She talked while she washed dishes and vacuumed the floor and weeded the garden and talked and talked and talked until Koutarou fell asleep to the sound of her talking. 

The sound of a heavy knock woke him up the next morning. He would have just ignored it, his eyes were nearly swollen shut and his hair was a disaster, but the sound wouldn’t stop. He stumbled out of bed, still dressed in the stupid new clothes he’d been wearing the night before.

He unlocked the deadbolt unsteadily and then pulled the door open slowly, ready to tell whoever it was to go away.

“Koutarou,” Keiji said, looking like he’d been hit by a truck. “I’m so- I’m so sorry.”

 

He’d brought donuts in a pink box that looked like it should hold a dozen, but only had eight. He insisted Koutarou eat one, even though he was training and he wasn’t supposed to have anything other than like seven eggs for breakfast.

Holding a chocolate donut in unsteady hands, he followed Keiji to the couch. They sat down. Keiji took a deep breath. And then he started to cough because everything still smelled like rotten eggs.

When he finally calmed down, he took the hand that wasn’t full of donut and held it tight.

“Based on our exp-experience last night, and a phone conversation I had with Chikara later in the evening, it’s become apparent that I am not very…” he ran his tongue around his lips, probably because they were coated in sugar, “good at sex.”

“Oh no!” Koutarou waved his donut in the air. “We were just nervous and—”

“No,” Keiji reached up and grabbed the donut hand. “You were right. I was so focused on my own anxiety over doing a good job that I paid no attention to you. I wouldn’t even let you kiss me.”

Koutarou exhaled, not knowing how to have this conversation without making things worse. Except there was maybe one thing.

“I was pretty nervous too.”

Keiji made eye contact. He had really dark bags under his eyes, and his eyelids were swollen up.

“I want you to teach me to be better. At sex. Sex with you,” he said firmly. “I don’t particularly care about being better at sex in general,” he added in case Koutarou was worried.

He wasn’t but it had been really sweet anyway.

Sweet or not, though… “I’ve never trained anyone to be better in bed!”

“You’ve trained new teammates,” Keiji was taking this super serious. “You know how to motivate people, and pick up on the things that they need to improve. I know you’ve taught Hinata how to spike at least three different ways this summer.”

“Spiking isn’t the same as banging though!”

It was hard to tell, but Keiji’s shoulders slumped a little, just a tiny tiny bit. He was sad, and he needed to not be sad. Koutarou suddenly felt a lot more confident than he probably should about making him that way.

“Okay! I’ll do it,” he pulled the donut hand free and sat the donut on the table. “But, you gotta promise that you won’t—”

“I won’t kick you out again.”

“Yeah that, and also—”

“I won’t get angry with you for being honest with me. I think the experience will enhance our intimacy. After last night, things can only improve.”

That was true. And a really nice thing to say.

But Koutarou still felt pretty nervous.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many thanks to [beechichi](http://beechichi.tumblr.com) for the lovely piece she created! i'm so glad i commissioned her!
> 
> and abundant thanks to liv for their beta work! 
> 
> next update on the 18th. final update on new year’s eve.


	2. Chapter 2

Even though Keiji had already eaten four donuts, Koutarou made him a healthy breakfast.

Actually it was four and three quarter donuts because Keiji ate the chocolate donut that Koutarou hadn’t finished eating. But when the omelettes were ready it was like Keiji hadn’t eaten anything at all. He finished his before Koutarou had even eaten three bites, and then drank two glasses of milk on top of that. Then he started eating more donuts.

Koutarou wasn’t a nutritionist or anything, but he knew a decent number of rules about eating to stay healthy. Keiji lived his life breaking almost every single one of those rules.

Things were fine while they were eating, and even while Koutarou had been cooking. It was easy to talk about nothing that mattered much while you were making sure the eggs were just right. Then once the eating got started it was serious business and neither of them talked at all. But as soon as Koutarou finished his last bite he realized that he didn’t have anything light or easy left to talk about.

And Keiji was there, looking serious and waiting for Koutarou to do something or say something about this new plan. But all Koutarou had ever helped anyone out with was physical conditioning and that was something a person pretty much did on their own. Strength, speed, and endurance weren’t really the issue. Unless Keiji wanted to carry him. Well, and maybe his endurance could be better, considering that one time he’d cum in his pants. But so had Koutarou like, a minute later.

He knew he had to pick things for Keiji to focus on, and he didn’t know what they were and he wasn’t about to make something up. So Keiji was just gonna have to wait.

Only Keiji didn’t know he had to wait just yet.

He was in the middle of asking why Koutarou’s apartment smelled so bad when Koutarou picked him up, sat him on the counter, and kissed him the way he’d wanted to last night when things got weird. He tasted like garlic because the omelettes had been full of it. Koutarou probably tasted like garlic too so it was fine. Keiji wrapped his legs around Koutarou’s back and buried his fingers in his hair, then pulled so that their faces were pretty much smashed together. But it was a good kind of smash and Koutarou felt like it was okay that he’d never really let go of Keiji’s ass, so he started kneading it and if things had been like this last night it would have been a hell of a lot easier to get off.

After about a minute, or maybe an hour, Keiji let go of his hair and pulled away.

“I have to go to work,” he said softly. His voice said that he really, really didn’t wanna go but he had to because he was Keiji and he was responsible. Koutarou was jealous of every thirsty gay boy who was gonna end up in that Starbucks. He thought about giving Keiji a hickey just to remind them that he was super taken, but then he remembered that that was a dick move. He was a good enough kisser to not leave hickeys anyway.

“I gotta… clean,” he said, even though he didn’t, not really.

Keiji leaned back on his hands and unwrapped his legs from around Koutarou’s back. He stretched his neck and looking so beautiful that Koutarou kinda wanted to eat him. But not actually. 

“Why does it smell like rotten eggs?”

He was still explaining about the mold tea and how it was fucking everywhere while Keiji picked up his donuts, grabbed his keys, and made his way to the door.

“I love you,” he said bluntly, looking into Koutarou’s eyes like he could just _do that_ and Koutarou wouldn’t immediately die. 

Koutarou said he loved him too but he was also kissing him at the same time, so he didn’t really do a good job of either. But Keiji got the point.

 

It was Sunday — Koutarou’s day off from everything — so he had lots of time to sit down and figure out what it was that Keiji could do better in bed. It was really, really hard, so he cleaned the floor for the fortieth time to try to get rid of the damn rotten egg smell. The mop hadn’t seemed to be cutting it, so he got on his hands and knees and scrubbed the tile with baking soda.

Koutarou was a pretty messy person, but he liked to clean. It cleared his head and gave him something to do so he could think about things without the things getting too mixed up.

Keiji made lists when he was trying to figure things out. Koutarou had seen them all over his room and in notebooks too. Most of them were for the novel he was working on, but they were for other stuff too, like college courses he wanted to take and cars he wanted to buy. Koutarou didn’t work with lists well at all. The whole linear sort of thing was kind of a mess in his head.

So he put what was going on with this situation into a series of mental piles.

There was the pile where Keiji hadn’t kissed him even though Koutarou had really wanted him to. That pile was red. He’d put other stuff there later, probably.

There was the pile where Keiji had been really nervous. That was the blue pile.

There was the pile where Keiji had been angry about everything. Yellow was probably the best color for that.

So what was the other stuff that had happened that was bad? Well, the hand job itself definitely was in the red pile. How pushy he’d been was blue, probably. Oh, and when Koutarou hadn’t been able to finger him, definitely blue. There were like ten times where something funny had happened but no one had laughed. They all went in the yellow pile for sure.

By the time he was mopping the floor with vinegar and water that sizzled when it touched the baking soda, he had his three piles all set up. Not everything fit super well. There were some greens and some oranges and some purples. But he could see the similarities clear enough that he had some kind of idea of what was going on. Maybe.

He found a red, yellow, and blue marker in Teru and Hana’s room, and three index cards in his desk. He pinned them all up on a corkboard that had had like, two pictures of friends from home on it. And then using each of the markers, he wrote on them.

Red was: PAY ATTENTION

Blue was: TALK

And yellow was: LAUGH

When he finished, he really, really wanted to talk it over with somebody. Preferably Keiji, but he couldn’t do that because he was supposed to know what he was talking about. Kuroo would be the second choice but he couldn’t go there for obvious reasons. Even ignoring the whole brothers thing, Kuroo didn’t care about sex too much. Oikawa would make fun of Keiji, and that was not okay. Koutarou’s friends back home would make fun of _him_ and that was also not okay. Teru and Hana were gone.

There really was only one person he could talk to about all of this, and he already owed her a favor.

Guess he’d have to make it two.

 

“Wow Bokuto, I’m impressed,” Yukie said through the mouthful of the chocolate chip cookies that Koutarou had baked for her. She was looking at his corkboard like it said something deep, even though there were only three words on it. “This really _is_ how you have good sex. Bravo. I was expecting you to have ‘blowjobs’ written on here five times or something.”

“I’m being serious!”

“So was I. Anyway, who does this? You’re so weird, you know that?”

“You shaved your head!”

She had, and maybe he should have said something when he opened the door, like, “Oooh you shaved your head!” but it was too late for that.

“And it looks cute, doesn’t it?”

“Well… yeah.”

He wanted to eat another cookie but he could only have two because of training, so he just stared while Yukie stuffed them into her cute shaved head.

“I’m serious. Ya did good Kou,” she punched his shoulder and then winced. He felt kinda good about that. “So what do you need me for, anyway?”

“I just wanted to make sure I don’t sound fucking crazy when I tell him about this stuff,” Koutarou admitted. “Not sure how to teach him how to laugh, though.”

“He already knows how to laugh,” she gave him a sideways look before cramming in another cookie.

“How d’you know?”

She didn’t even take the time to finish chewing. “He’s dating an idiot.”

“HEY!”

So that was all the help he got from her.

 

He spent the rest of the afternoon googling how to help someone be better at sex. He didn’t know what to look for, really, and most of his results ended up being porn. Not even good porn. Maybe he and Keiji could watch porn together. That was an idea.

A bad idea, probably.

Keiji texted him over his breaks, mostly describing weird customers, but also asking if he could come over when his shift was done. Koutarou wasn’t about to say no. He wondered if Keiji wanted to start this whole sex thing right away or if he wanted to let it simmer. Just in case, he took a shower. His hair hadn’t even been gelled or dried yet when there was a knock on the door. He’d told Keiji a month ago that he could just come in, but he still wasn’t doing it.

“Oh,” Keiji blinked when Koutarou opened the door. “Your hair.”

And that’s how they started kissing.

Keiji tasted like coffee and he was trying to walk Koutarou backwards into the house but no one had ever walked Koutarou backwards anywhere in his life. They kept tripping on the shoes that were by the door and a lamp and some chairs and then eventually they made it to the couch and Keiji was on top for once and kissing Koutarou really, really hard. When they’d landed, something had fallen off of the end table and broke into pieces. Koutarou was a little worried about whatever it was, but it was hard to pay much attention because Keiji’s hands were in his hair and they were pulling.

“How was work?” Koutarou asked when his mouth wasn’t quite so occupied.

“Dull,” Keiji muttered, tipping up Koutarou’s chin so he could kiss at his neck. Koutarou didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was leaving marks that Koutarou’s team was definitely going to tease him about. It felt great. Almost amazing, but Keiji kept barely grazing the part of Koutarou’s neck that felt the best, and when he finally reached it, he was using his teeth. Not in a good way.

But he was also straddling Koutarou’s dick and trying really hard and those two things were more than enough to give Koutarou an instant, fond boner.

“Tell me what you want me to do,” Keiji said into his neck.

While that would normally be hot as fuck, today it was a pretty loaded statement.

“Please,” he added, brushing past the spot that Koutarou wanted him to kiss by like, an eighth of an inch. He wasn’t being pushy; his voice was soft and he was trying so hard and Koutarou didn’t know what to do so he sat both of them up.

Keiji looked… not the way Koutarou wanted him to look. He was a confusing mix of nervous and turned on and even maybe a little sad. And this wasn’t supposed to be sad! They could figure this out. With Keiji’s help, Koutarou had passed freshman writing. They could do pretty much anything together at this point. He just had to… had to…

“But I _can’t_ tell you, Keiji! I mean, you’re trying so hard and you’re so cute and I want you really bad right now, but the whole thing is, you’ve gotta kinda figure some of that out on your own? Like you’re kissing me and you’re kissing me and you’re kissing me but there’s this spot I want you to kiss and you keep missing it and I don’t know how to tell you how to get there without just telling you but that’s a really important thing you have to learn! I don’t know how to teach anything like this, I’m not even sure how to say it, you can’t learn how to be good at this stuff just by following a set of rules. It’s like… it’s like…”

He didn’t know what it was like.

“Art,” Keiji sat back, grinding against Koutarou’s dick.

The grinding didn’t make what he was saying any less confusing. Koutarou was trying not to give him a look, but he must have been because Keiji was starting to get scowly. And Koutarou felt a little better because Keiji was so cute when he was scowling, but he also felt worse because his look had made fun of Keiji’s idea.

“Well, I mean, I guess. But people are trying to like, express themselves through art? And maybe I’m having really boring sex but it’s never been like that for me. Oh! But you know what it is like?”

Keiji did not know, so Bokuto wrapped his arms around his waist and pulled him close.

“Volleyball!”

Oh Keiji did not like that.

“I fail to see how our sex life in any way resembles—”

“I mean, it could be any sport! But volleyball’s the one I know, so it’s what it reminds me of. Cause they’re like, both things you do with your bodies…”

“So is pushing a shopping cart.”

“Now wait just a minute!”

Keiji crossed his arms over his chest, leaned even heavier onto Koutarou’s dick, and gave him an even scowlier look.

“Okay, so you use your bodies for both of them, and you get better with training, but the most important part of training isn’t really even with your body, it’s with your mind!”

“Oh.”

The scowly look went away.

“Intuition and stuff! The way you know what the other blocker’s gonna do, or how the ball’s gonna spin, or where the serve’s gonna go. So sex is,” —actually maybe this was all a— “kinda… like that…?” —stupid idea. 

“I stand corrected,” Keiji said. His face was hard to read and Koutarou was starting to feel pretty bad about himself and everything he’d ever done in his life, so he assumed the worst.

“But you’re mad.”

“I am not,” Keiji put his hand on Koutarou’s shoulder and leaned forward. “I’m impressed. It was an excellent metaphor.”

Koutarou looked at the ground because he felt really, really stupid. And maybe Keiji was just saying he wasn’t mad.

Only… Keiji never _just_ _said_ anything.

Then he wasn’t looking at the ground anymore. “I’m not angry, Koutarou,” Keiji said, fingers holding up his chin. Koutarou’s heart jumped in his chest because Keiji was here, right here, and he wanted him and he loved him and nothing was wrong.

It was just in his stupid head.

“Okay,” Koutarou cleared his throat. “I picked out three things to work on. They’re on a cork board in my room. I can show ‘em to you later.”

“Later?”

Koutarou lowered his hands until they were on Keiji’s hips then leaned back until he was lying on the couch again. 

“Yeah. I’m gonna tell you what to do, like you asked.”

Whatever Keiji was feeling about this entire situation, it had to be good, because his cheeks got pink and his eyes got dark. It was something to keep in mind for the future. But not now, because ordering Keiji around in bed (or on the couch) would not teach him to pay attention.

“What should I- should I do?” he gnawed on his lip. Koutarou was getting hard again, the pull in his stomach impossible to ignore.

“Well,” he coughed, “there’s this spot on my neck that I especially like havin’ kissed. You gotta find it, and I’m not gonna tell you where it is.”

Keiji scowled, “Isn’t communication the most important aspect of sex?”

“We’ll get to that, yeah, but some things you gotta know without words! Do you trust me or not, Keiji?”

The weight on Koutarou’s dick shifted, and then Keiji was crawling down his body, face set and determined.

“Yes,” he said, right next to Koutarou’s pulse point. “Of course I do.”

The lips that touched Koutarou’s neck had to be Keiji’s. Because Keiji was sprawled out on his chest and there wasn’t anyone else’s head there. But they sure weren’t acting like Keiji’s. Keiji used his teeth. Always. No matter what, teeth ended up being involved. And Koutarou had started to like Keiji’s teeth. He probably even preferred toothy kisses at this point. But there were no teeth anywhere near his neck right now.

Keiji was kissing him methodically, starting right under his jaw, moving downwards in a line. When he reached his collarbone, he jumped right back up to the top and started kissing down another line. It would have been pretty silly, if the kisses hadn’t been the softest most delicate things Koutarou had ever felt in his life.

They were on the wrong side, but even still.

On top of that, Keiji was holding his breath. Koutarou could feel it come out in one big exhale that danced across his skin when he couldn’t hold it anymore. And even if he wasn’t touching the spot, the fact that he was focusing so much that he wasn’t even breathing made Koutarou’s toes curl and his dick twitch.

Since Keiji was sitting on his dick, he noticed. 

He kissed lightly over the same spot, sucking just a little, and of course his teeth got involved. He slid his hands up the nape of Koutarou’s neck, cradling his head in his long fingers while he kicked his feet just a little behind him. It wasn’t even the spot, it wasn’t even close, but all the attention was making Koutarou feel kind of dizzy. Keiji could’ve kissed softer or harder and the teeth were just relentless, but it didn’t matter because he wasn’t focusing on anything else but him.

“This isn’t it, is it?” he muttered, disappointed. But it was a soft kind of disappointment, not scowly at all.

“Said I wasn’t gonna tell you,” Koutarou said, even though he really wanted to tell him.

Keiji reached down, grabbed him by the chin, and turned his head.

These kisses were faster, but they fluttered over his skin and felt so good that Koutarou grabbed onto Keiji’s hips without thinking about it.

“Oh,” Keiji smiled against his skin, “interesting.”

What was interesting was the way he kept kissing in bigger and bigger circles and getting closer and closer to the spot on Koutarou’s neck that was right underneath the point of his jaw. And it was so good that Koutarou kept grabbing at his hips, tighter and tighter, while Keiji kept stopping and chuckling to himself until he was so close and he was _almost there_ and then he was sitting up???

“What do I get if I’ve found it?” he asked with his eyebrows more than his mouth.

“That’s um… a surprise,” Koutarou croaked because he had no idea what he was going to fucking do. He was wound so tight and this was just neck kissing and it turned out that Keiji was very good at learning new things. He gently grazed the spot with his fingers and Koutarou whimpered a little. He didn’t mean to do it, it made everything really obvious, but he was so keyed up that he couldn’t help it.

Keiji grinned and he looked kind of evil, but Koutarou was feeling a little too desperate to care.

“I win.”

Koutarou sat up, feeling the friction in his pants and desperately trying to hold back from rutting into Keiji’s ass because he was really close like some kind of teenager and this wasn’t gonna end well.

“Well, maybe, but—”

Then Keiji’s ass started to vibrate and it was all over.

 

He’d never seen Keiji laugh so much.

Well not at first. At first he answered his phone and apologized to his mom for keeping the car too long.

After that was when he started to laugh. He fell on Koutarou’s chest, grabbed handfuls of his shirt, and howled. Koutarou didn’t feel great about it. He’d managed to go a solid five years without cumming in his pants, and now he’d gone and done it twice in the space of a week. But after awhile, Keiji’s laugh was so obnoxious and loud that he couldn’t help laughing too. It got to the point where Keiji was laughing so hard he was crying, tears soaking into Koutarou’s shirt.

It actually was pretty funny, when you sat and thought about it. But Koutarou’s shorts were gross and Keiji was rolling around, making them grosser, so he sat up, grabbed Keiji’s ass and then picked him up. He managed to make his way across the house and into his room without tripping on anything. Then he threw Keiji on the bed.

He was still laughing, only now it was hiccups, and Koutarou was gonna take a video if he didn’t stop.

The cork board was leaning against the wall. Koutarou grabbed it and sat it on the edge of the bed.

“This is the plan!” he said in a loud voice. A sort of annoyed voice, if he was being honest. But there was cum in his underwear and even if it was funny he was still pretty embarrassed about it.

With a few left-over laughs, Keiji sat up. He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes, then cleaned the lenses on his shirt. That left Koutarou awkwardly holding the stupid cork board. 

When he finally put his glasses on, Keiji squinted at the cork board for a long time. Koutarou wanted to take his pants off, or he wanted Keiji to say something, or really he wanted to do anything but stand at the bottom of the bed holding the thing up, but he had to wait because Keiji liked to think about things maybe more than they needed to be thought about.

“I anticipated more pr-practical instruction,” he finally said.

Koutarou’s entire existence slumped.

“I didn’t say the alternative was a bad thing,” Keiji got up on his knees and then sat back on his ankles. “This is profoundly insightful.”

“Well,” Koutarou unslumped himself all the way into a swagger, “turns out I’m smarter than we both thought.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Keiji slid off the bed and Koutarou felt himself slumping again. The board fell onto the mattress and he still had cum in his pants and it was getting cold.

Keiji rounded the bed and stood in front of him. He wasn’t pouty or scowly or any face Koutarou could pick out.

“Please don’t infer that I don’t think you’re intelligent,” he said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” 

It was weird how when you blushed you could feel it in your ears.

 

He didn’t see Keiji on Monday at all. Apparently Ennoshita was moving back to New York way before school started, so the two of them were spending the day together. Which didn’t really bother Koutarou at all, but just in case it started to bother him, he called Kuroo and the two of them went to the beach.

Kuroo was friends with everybody, even people he should hate, so it wasn’t like he had a huge reason to be lonely. But with Kozume gone he was really, really lonely. He and Koutarou both needed a distraction. Kuroo from moping about Kozume, and Koutarou from talking to someone about this whole sex thing, since he was pretty certain that he needed to keep it to himself.

That didn’t mean he didn’t need to talk about it, though.

So they unloaded his truck in the parking lot. The break looked okay. It probably hadn’t been worth it to drive out, but now that they were there there was no point in staying dry.

“What’s going on with you and my brother?” Kuroo asked, getting into his wetsuit. His bare ass was on the cab seat. Koutarou thought that it was kind of weird that out of the two sons in the Akaashi family, the one who _wasn’t_ his boyfriend would be the first one to get his bare ass all over the truck.

Also, he wasn’t sure how to answer that question.

“We’re good! Nothing’s wrong! It’s all fine!”

Kuroo hopped a little as he pulled his wetsuit over his ass, “You do know that nothing could convince me less than what you just said, right?” 

“Pretty sure you don’t wanna talk about it, bro.”

Throwing his long arm across the seat as he turned, Kuroo sighed. “Look. Keiji was crying on Saturday night. He’s not really a crier, so…”

“Are you really playing the protective big brother right now?” Koutarou really hoped it was a joke because he did not know how to answer.

“Fraid so.”

Koutarou turned, frantically. “It’s not what you think, okay! Just… I don’t wanna mess things up, and I think I messed things up by not wanting to mess them up, you know?”

“Okay, maybe back up a little,” Kuroo held up his hand. “Oh. Wait. This…” his nose crinkled in a very familiar scowl, “is a sex thing, isn’t it?”

“…Yeah,” Koutarou mumbled.

Kuroo rubbed the back of his neck all the way up to the top of his head while the cab of the truck got at least fifty percent smaller. “Well. Okay. Well…” he swallowed, “do you wanna talk about it?”

“Do _you_ wanna talk about it?” Koutarou really, really hoped he didn’t. “Cause like, it’s okay! We’re talking it out! It’s… not fixed yet but it’s gonna be fixed I have a plan and—”

“Wouldn’t be a very good best friend if I didn’t want to talk it out, man. Even if it’s _severely_ uncomfor—”

“I’m your best friend?” Koutarou’s vision got very blurry very fast. Probably because of all the tears that he was suddenly crying.

“I spend every minute I’m not working or with Kenma with you! I thought you knew that!”

“Well, you never said!” Koutarou tried to blink the tears away but they only got worse. “I mean, we’ve only known each other for a year and Kozume is your best friend and…”

“Kenma is my everything,” Kuroo said, like you could just say something like that and not be in the middle of some kind of romantic song. “But I’m allowed to have a best friend too.”

“Oh.”

His mind was fuzzy. An excited kind of fuzzy, but also too excited, where a thing was so good that he couldn’t let himself believe it.

“Oho?”

“I’m just really overwhelmed, dude!” his voice cracked which was really embarrassing. “Can we just… surf now?”

“Are you gonna say it back?” Kuroo grinned like a stupid cat.

“OF COURSE YOU’RE MY BEST FRIEND!” Koutarou told everyone on the entire beach as he flung himself across the seat to hug him.

In the end, they didn’t talk about the sex stuff, which was good for about fifteen different reasons. And the swell really was just okay. But it was still some of the best surfing of Koutarou’s life.

“I would like it if you slept over,” Keiji announced on Tuesday as Koutarou was driving them back from the movies. Well, actually it was Wednesday at that point. Thankfully Wednesday was Koutarou’s other day off because he wasn’t looking forward to waking up in five hours. He’d do that for Keiji and the weird artsy movie that Keiji had wanted to see, but he was also really glad to not do it.

“Just to sleep,” Keiji added, making Koutarou aware of how long he’d been thinking about answering.

“Yeah! Sure! I mean, your bed’s kinda small but we’ll figure it out. Hey, so why do you have such a small bed anyway? You’ve got a lot of space in your room, and you’re pretty tall and I just always kinda wondered.” 

“I don’t roll very much in my sleep. Mom never offered, and I never asked.”

Koutarou woke up every morning with most of his blankets on a pile on the floor. But this was going to be fine, they’d figure it out. Plus…

“We don’t… have to just sleep. I mean, if you don’t wanna,” he cracked his neck in an effort to seem extra chill. “It’s fine if you do, it’s fine either way but you know, we don’t… gotta.”

He couldn’t really see the face Keiji was making because had to keep his eyes on the road. And he really wished he could see it because it could be anywhere from really good to really terrible and he kind of wanted to know either way. 

“My brother will be in the next room,” Keiji said flatly.

 

“ _Your brother’s in the next room!_ ” Koutarou hissed.

Keiji’s laptop was sitting on his desk chair playing a superhero movie that Koutarou had forgotten all about. Keiji was kissing that spot on his neck like his life depended on it, and it felt really good and the bed was bumping around because it was too small for both of them. Or even one of them. 

“There’s a bathroom in-between us,” Keiji said dismissively, then started kissing Koutarou’s neck again. Good thing that spot felt so damn good, because he wasn’t trying much of anything else. He really didn’t need to, because Koutarou was swallowing his groans and fisting the sheets and actually why was he doing that when Keiji’s ass was right there for the grabbing.

The squeak Keiji made when he squeezed echoed through the night and maybe through the bathroom. Lifting his head, he looked into Koutarou’s eyes. The light from the laptop made his face glow. “Do you want to- want to stop?”

Koutarou did not want to stop but there had to be some sort of bro code about getting your best friend’s brother off while your best friend was in the next room. Even if there was a bathroom in the middle.

“Tetsurou sleeps like the dead.”

“Okay good because you know I don’t really want to sto—”

Keiji kissed him deeply, much longer than normal, and Koutarou wondered a little if he had been practicing somehow. But he couldn’t wonder for very long, because Keiji started grinding, which was pretty much his signature move and it was a really good move but okay they needed to probably branch out some because Koutarou didn’t want to come in his pants again and he’d also promised Keiji that he’d help him learn new sex things.

“Hold up,” he said softly, and not because he really wanted to say it. But he’d said that he’d help and there was no time like the present.

Keiji crossed his arms on Koutarou’s chest and lifted his head.

“Did I do some- something wrong?”

Koutarou’s heart broke a little bit. He didn’t want Keiji to feel bad about sex, and now he obviously felt anxious about it. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

“Nah, it was great,” Koutarou moved both of his hands from Keiji’s ass to cup his cheeks instead. “I just wanna try something.”

Keiji had a new face that Koutarou was starting to learn. It was like he was studying something. And unfortunately Koutarou was probably going to react to that face by getting turned on from now on, because he mostly saw Keiji getting studious about sex.

“Where’s your lube?”

 

“I’m starting to think you have a thing for handjobs,” Keiji said as Koutarou peeled him out of his pants. They were still talking quiet, because Kuroo was still in his room just a few feet over. Hopefully sleeping like a dead guy so Koutarou didn’t become one.

“Is that so bad?” Koutarou grinned and leaned back on the pillows he’d put against the wall. “I’ve got a thing for a lot of stuff.”

“I fail to see how you giving _me_ a h……andjob is going to make me better at sex,” Keiji wiggled as he settled back into Koutarou’s arms and he laid them both down on their sides. “Shouldn’t I be doing that?”

Koutarou chuckled and kissed the back of Keiji’s neck. It made him shudder and let out this fluttering sort of grunt that was one of the hotter things Koutarou had ever heard in his life. “You can give me one when we’re done, if you want.”

Keiji tried to turn, but he couldn’t quite do it. “Of course I want to,” he huffed. Then his voice got quieter. “Why would you say it like that?”

Climbing over him, Koutarou’s head hung upside-down over Keiji’s face. “Cause you’re gonna be real tired when I finish with you, _ku'uipo_ ,” he grinned. “Now, this is the thing, you gotta tell me what you want—”

“I thought intuition was important,” Keiji scowled. “Also my brother is in the next room.”

“Are you gonna make up your mind about that? First you were all like, ‘We gotta be quiet!’ and then you’re all like, ‘Take me Koutarou, I don’t care about the noise!’ and now we’ve gotta be quiet again. I’ll do whatever you want! Just… you gotta tell me.”

Keiji sighed, “I get your point. ”

“My point?”

“Although I am straightforward, I suppose I’m also not always certain of what I want, or at least comfortable talking about it,” he went on, like Koutarou had said something kind of deep. He hadn’t, he’d just really wanted to know if Keiji wanted to keep going. “I see what you meant about intuition, but I understand what you mean about this too. I’m afraid I’ll be somewhat aw……kward, but I’ll do my best.”

Okay so now was maybe not the time to admit that Keiji had just made a thing really profound that wasn’t supposed to be. He’d tell him later.

Maybe way later.

“You don’t gotta be afraid,” he gently kissed Keiji’s ear. “Just talk to me and I’ll take care of you.”

Keiji shuddered then paused for a second. When he finally spoke his voice was soft and scratchy, “I um… I… enjoyed what you just said.”

“I’ll always take care of you, baby.” Koutarou grazed his hand down Keiji’s side, slid it under his shirt, and ran his fingers over his stomach.

“Oh god. Don’t ever call me that in p-public.”

Koutarou stopped moving his hand, “Don’t like it?”

“No! I…”

Part of him wanted to jump up and run around the room, but he bit his lip instead.

“I like it,” Keiji cleared his throat. “Very much. Too much. And I liked what you were doing… with your hand.”

This was the best idea Koutarou had ever had in his entire life.

“What was I doing?”

Keiji sighed in annoyance, then took a deep breath to calm down. “Touching my stomach.”

“Is that what you want me to do?” Koutarou peeked down at Keiji’s underwear. His cock was straining against the purple fabric.

“Yes but…” his voice was so soft Koutarou almost missed it, “…c-can you touch my…”

“It’s okay, Keiji. You can tell me.”

“Nip-nipples. Touch them,” he squirmed in Koutarou’s arms.

Keiji hadn’t asked him to lift his shirt and since he’d always kept something on, Koutarou didn’t push the material away, just slid his hand up across the skin underneath. Keiji’s chest was soft, there was some hair there, but not a lot. His right nipple, when he found it, was already really hard.

“Like this?” Koutarou asked, rolling it in his fingers. Keiji was holding his other hand, and he squeezed it tight. Koutarou had done a lot of hot things, but this was somehow on the top of the list already. 

“Yes!” Keiji said way too loudly. He bit his lip, “Yes, like that, but… harder.”

Koutarou pinched and Keiji arched his back. Before his back was even flush against him again Koutarou fumbled for the other nipple and did the same thing.

“You really like that, huh?” he asked, and he wasn’t even trying to be sexy or anything he just really wanted to know. He slid his hand down and gently pressed against Keiji’s lower stomach as he moved his hand back and forth. Keiji hadn’t asked for that, but it was hard enough for Koutarou to keep from working him over already. He had to do something to distract himself.

“Koutarou please…” Keiji begged, rolling into his hand and wiggling so it went lower. “I’ve been… I just… I c-can’t…”

“Dunno what you want if you don’t tell me,” Koutarou said, even though it was pretty obvious what Keiji wanted.

“J-jerk me off,” he pressed his back into Koutarou’s stomach as he wiggled his briefs down his legs. His cock bounced against his belly and his hands fluttered up his thighs, like he was desperate to touch himself. With the numb arm that had been underneath Keiji the whole time, Koutarou sat them both up, settling Keiji between his legs. The lube was right by his knee, and he poured some into his hand, putting his palms together to warm it up.

“Okay baby,” he slid his hands over Keiji’s cock, cradling his balls in one and loosely holding the shaft in the other as he started to pump. “Just tell me how.”

Keiji was watching, his chin tucked against his chest, his hands digging into Koutarou’s thighs. Koutarou was rocking himself against Keiji’s back so they were moving together in long lazy waves.

“Tighter,” Keiji whispered, and Koutarou had kinda figured, but he squeezed his hand just a little tighter.

“Like that?” his lips grazed Keiji’s ear.

“Yes, and,” he gulped for air, “and m……ove your hand faster.”

Koutarou sped up, lightly kissing the nape of Keiji’s neck in time with his hand.

“Oh oh too fast! And stop… the tip… too much… not till I’m closer…”

“How’s this?” his hand slowed, and he only passed over the head every second or third time.

“ _Koutarou_ ,” Keiji groaned, pressing into him. Koutarou ground into Keiji’s back, desperate to get off himself. But he had to wait, it wasn’t his turn yet, and he wanted to hear the noises Keiji made, the noises he was already making.

“Your other- your other hand,” his voice was ragged, “jjjjjjust…”

Not even waiting to hear the rest, Koutarou slid his other hand down to Keiji’s hole, teased his finger around the rim, then gently pushed it in.

“Oh shit, oh shit,” Keiji grunted. And then, body stiff and tight, he bowed forward and came all over Koutarou’s hand.

 

He got the sleepiest blowjob after that. Keiji had been wrecked, but he’d insisted, sliding off the bed and dropping to his knees. Koutarou was on edge enough that it didn’t take any skill or time, but Keiji swallowed without a second thought and then wiped his face on his arm. It was the hottest end to the hottest thing Koutarou could ever remember doing in his life.

They didn’t sleep very well, though. Koutarou ended up on the floor and it was cold and Keiji insisted he stay in the bed, so he got up in the bed again but really there was no way to win in that situation. Keiji did not move at all in his sleep so Koutarou kept waking him up every time he did. To try to fix that, he stayed perfectly still but then couldn’t sleep himself.

When they came down for breakfast, Kuroo was sitting at the breakfast bar, eating a bowl of oatmeal. The look he gave them was the sort of look that Koutarou imagined a person who’d been tortured would have.

“Rough night?” Kuroo asked, laughing in a crazy sort of way. “Cause let me tell you two, mine could not have been worse.”

 

Koutarou spent the actual day part of Wednesday reeling from the awesome night he’d had. This was all while he was working out with Oikawa at the gym, and then at the health center, because Oikawa had messed up his knee.

Again.

“Don’t tell Iwa,” was the first thing he said when he hobbled out of the exam room, knee in a brace and crutches under his arm. “This will be fine in a day or so, and he’s very busy with a new contract so it’s likely that he… won’t…” his face fell, “you already told him didn’t you?”

Koutarou held up a phone flashing with messages from Iwaizumi and Kuroo and Keiji, all asking if Oikawa was okay.

“I’m not super an expert in this whole dating thing, but don’t you want your boyfriend to know that you got hurt?” Koutarou asked.

Oikawa sat down hard in a waiting room chair, probably too hard for his knee, but Koutarou didn’t know, he’d never been hurt in his life. Knock on wood.

“It’s not that I don’t want him to know, it’s just that I don’t…”

“Take care of yourself?”

“ _Mean_ , Bokuto.”

Koutarou knew that he himself was ridiculous, he’d known for years, but Oikawa was also ridiculous and Koutarou wasn’t certain if he’d figured that out yet or not.

“Seriously man, it’s hard to watch you get hurt. Nobody on the team expects you to work like you do! You don’t need to kill yourself to be our setter! You especially don’t!”

Oikawa stood up almost as fast as he’d sat down. “Let’s walk, shall we?”

“Okay, good, because Iwaizumi is already on his way to pick you up.”

They didn’t walk very fast. Oikawa was pretty experienced with crutches at this point, but he was still not very quick with them. Not to mention there was some kind of middle school sports camp running around, so the two of them towered over a bunch of really excited little soccer players that they had to be careful not to step on. 

“I do…” Oikawa finally stopped and sat down on a bench, “ _admittedly_ , I do work harder than I should.”

“Yeah,” Koutarou had a lot to say on that subject, but he probably wasn’t supposed to say anything so he kept his mouth shut. One of the first things Keiji had ever told him was not to say everything that was on his mind, and it had been really good advice.

Only Oikawa wasn’t saying anything. And it was getting kind of weird.

The crutch that had been leaning against the bench’s armrest clattered to the ground, ruining any dramatic tension that he’d had been trying to set up. But Koutarou pretended it hadn’t happened because he didn’t want Oikawa to stop talking. Or actually he wanted him to start talking again.

“There are a lot of things in the world I want to do,” he started slowly.

Koutarou bit his tongue because there were also a lot of things he wanted to do like win the championship which they couldn’t do if their setter kept being so fucking self destructive.

“I want to be the best setter I can be. I want to find success as an actor. I want to marry Iwa and start a family.”

That was really romantic, and really confusing. “Didn’t you like, win a huge award for acting, though? I’m pretty certain Iwaizumi would marry you tomorrow if you asked. And I mean, you got scouted to the national team with me… so…”

“I want to beat BYU next season. Ushiwaka has—”

“Look, I wanna beat them too, but we can’t win if our setter _works himself to fucking death_. You didn’t even get to play last time cause you hurt yourself!” Koutarou was not used to being the voice of reason and he wasn’t doing a very good job of it but he still had to try because Oikawa’s obsession with BYU was ridiculous. Which maybe he didn’t know because he didn’t know he was ridiculous. But he was. A lot. 

“If I stop, I’ll just… stop,” Oikawa said softly.

Koutarou tipped his head. “What does that mean?” he asked knowing full well it was probably some kind of deep thing that Keiji would have gotten right away.

After another long pause, Oikawa looked at him, finally. “I have no idea,” he said, choking on his own laughter. And he just sat there for awhile, laughing like a crazy person who saw nothing wrong with working himself to death. 

“I think you need therapy, bro,” Koutarou started to laugh himself.

“Oh I most certainly need that,” Oikawa was bent over, holding his stomach. “But I’m hardly the only one.”

Koutarou threw his head back, barking out laughter that was probably scaring all the little soccer players. But he definitely needed therapy, like ten years of it, so it was pretty funny actua—

“What are you two assholes doing?”

“Iwa!”

Iwaizumi looked as pissed off as his texts had been. And his voice was stormy, like usual. A good storm though. Koutarou still had a crush on him, but so did Keiji so it was fine.

“Come on,” he held out his hand, and picked up Oikawa’s crutches at the same time. “You need to eat something. When’s the last time you ate, anyway? Nevermind, I don’t wanna know.”

He pulled Oikawa up angrily and caught him softly and if that wasn’t their relationship in a nutshell Koutarou didn’t know what was.

 

On Thursday afternoon Keiji surprised him after practice, standing outside of the gym with a bag of Del Taco in one hand and a healthy-looking sandwich in the other. The other guys saw him and started elbowing Koutarou and asking him about his neck for the thirtieth time, but Koutarou was too busy being surprised to care.

He loved surprises.

Keiji did not love being picked up and spun around, but he didn’t drop the food. Then they found a bench on campus to sit at, right outside of the School of Management where Keiji’s mom worked.

“I rode up with her,” Keiji said in-between stuffing Del Taco fries in his face. “I was hoping I could go home with you, though I understand if you have other plans.”

Koutarou was pretty much vibrating he was so excited. “It’s fine! This is the best surprise, you can come home with me and we can hang out and play video games and it’ll be awesome!” He took an enormous bite of his sandwich, “Fuck, Keiji this is delicious! You’re the best!”

He looked over, and Keiji was blushing and it was the sweetest thing he’d ever seen in his whole life, and it made him blush too, even though he had a mouthful of sandwich.

“I love you, you know?” he said, with a mouth still full of sandwich.

Keiji blushed even more.

After they finished eating, they walked to Koutarou’s truck. He mostly ran around campus because he was always late, so it was kind of interesting, seeing what the buildings looked like up close. Keiji had his satchel, the one he kept his laptop in, and he looked nerdier than usual. And hot. They probably looked like some kinda pair, a sweaty jock and a sexy nerd, holding hands as they walked. 

“I’m gonna have to get a shower when we get back,” he said, swinging their hands between them. He sort of wanted to ask if Keiji wanted to get a shower with him, but sexy shit in the shower was like a level thirty sex maneuver and they were still on level five. “You can play Overwatch, though! Kozume’s probably playing, he’s on all the time.”’

Keiji crinkled up his nose, “I’m terrible at video games. I’ll just write while I wait.” 

Then he squeezed Bokuto’s hand tightly.

“And I… also love you.”

 

Getting a shower was somehow a million times better knowing that Keiji was waiting for him when he got out. It felt really… domestic, maybe? Or something. Like he wanted to make them both dinner and cuddle on the couch and sex didn’t even have to come into it. Or even cuddling. He’d be happy to just play Overwatch on the couch while Keiji wrote. They could just be in the same room doing different stuff and he’d be happy.

So when he popped out of the bathroom, towel over his shoulders, hair hanging down in his eyes, he wasn’t really ready for what was on the other side of the door.

Keiji had headphones in, and whatever he was listening to had to be really, really loud because he didn’t notice that Koutarou had opened the door. He was staring at his screen making a ridiculous face, mouthing words as he typed faster than Koutarou thought a person could type. Then his face changed dramatically and he started talking and typing again, like he was having some sort of conversation with himself.

It was the most adorable thing that had ever happened to anyone ever on earth.

He stood there and watched as Keiji had a whole conversation with himself. Of course, he watched too long. Keiji noticed he was staring and ripped off his headphones and scowled the cutest scowl that he’d ever scowled.

“See anything interesting?” he demanded, his entire face bright red.

“Were you uh… acting things out?” Koutarou asked. He bit the inside of his mouth to keep from laughing and he didn’t know how long he could hold it. “It was really cute! Whatever you were doing!”

Keiji looked like he was going to explode, so Koutarou picked him up and slung him over his shoulder as he made his way into his room.

“Koutarou, I would appreciate it if you’d stop picking me up,” Keiji told his ass. “We’ve been over this before. Just because I can’t carry you does not mean I need to be carried.”

“Okay,” Koutarou threw him on the bed.

“Would you,” Keiji slammed himself upright, still bouncing, “stop that?!? You’re going to break my glasses!” His scowly face had turned into something terrifying. He was pissed. Really, really pissed.

Koutarou had gone too far. He’d gone too far and now Keiji was going to hate him and he’d ruined everything.

“I’m sorry,” he said, because that was what you were supposed to say and he meant it he was so so so sorry. But it wasn’t enough, he’d fucked up and people didn’t stick around when you made them mad, why would they do that? There’s always someone better and—

Ruined ruined ruined ruined ruined ruined ruined ruined ruined ruined ruined. He always always always always always did this and now Keiji was going to leave and the best thing that had ever happened to him would be over and— 

“Koutarou. _Koutarou,”_ Keiji’s hands were soft on his face. “Please calm down. Nothing’s wrong. I’m not going to leave. Nothing is over. Come, sit.”

Oh. He’d been saying all that out loud.

Then they were sitting somehow, and Keiji’s hand was stroking the back of his neck, and it wasn’t ice, but his fingers were cold and soft and it felt nice. And they just sat there for awhile, leaning against each other.

“I was embarrassed,” Keiji said after a long time being quiet. “I was immersed in the scene I was writing and I felt very vulnerable to be caught in it.”

“I’m sorry for picking you up! I shoulda listened! I didn’t listen! I’m so sorry Keiji.”

Keiji laughed a little, really faintly. “I was just embarrassed. I actually en……joy it when you do that. But ack- acknowledging that is even more humiliating.”

Koutarou turned and their faces were close. Keiji’s glasses weren’t broken. They weren’t even bent.

“I’m not very good at l……aughing at myself,” he dropped his head to stare at his knees. “I think we both have that in common, though I’m much worse.”

At first Koutarou wanted to argue that he could so laugh at himself, but when he thought about it a little… yeah, Keiji was right, he did get pretty defensive a lot of the time.

“I have no idea how I’m going to be able to laugh during sex,” Keiji’s voice was really, really soft. “I’m quite ne……rvous about it, to be perfectly honest.”

Koutarou glanced at the cork board of betrayal, then back at Keiji.

“You don’t gotta laugh if you don’t feel it!” he flung his arms in the air hoping that maybe a little extra motion would help get his point across.

Keiji lifted his head. He wasn’t scowly at all, just sort of nervous and tired-looking. And Koutarou didn’t want him to be nervous and tired about sex. It was supposed to be fun, and maybe sometimes funny. Sex had always been fun for him, and maybe it hadn’t been a lot else and…

Oh fuck it hadn’t been much of anything else. Not at all.

“You want it to be… intimate,” he said, hoping to god it was the right word.

The tips of Keiji’s ears turned bright red, “I said no such thing.”

But Koutarou was too relieved he’d picked the right word to argue. “I’ve always just had fun sex, you know? Where you just bounce around and laugh a lot and maybe you don’t see the other person again or care that you won’t, you just have a good time. I’ve never had the looking-in-each-other’s-eyes-as-you-cum kind.”

The room was really quiet, except for the sound of Koutarou’s old laptop as it tried to keep itself from catching on fire.

“That’s almost exclusively the kind of sex I’ve had,” Keiji finally said.

Koutarou didn’t really expect to feel bad about that. But he did. He felt really really bad, and this was how Keiji probably felt about the laughing sex. Bad and jealous, so jealous even though they were with each other now and there was nothing wrong with having sex with anybody else in the past. But Keiji’d had slow, romantic sex with somebody and Koutarou didn’t know if he could give that to him right and—

“Can we just start over?” he asked, desperate to stop thinking about things that made him miserable. 

“From what point, exactly?”

That wasn’t really what he meant. “Ahhhh well not really start over, but just… why don’t we just wait and see what happens? Next time we’re feeling it, we’ll just do it! I can’t teach you how to have sex, Keiji, I’m sorry I acted like I could. I just didn’t want to let you down.”

Keiji leaned into him.

“I believe you’ve made me aware of two, potentially three, areas of legitimate improvement.”

Well that was pretty awesome, but he’d also made Keiji anxious, so he told him as much and fell back onto the bed. Keiji laid back too, although he wasn’t nearly as bouncy about it.

“Perhaps we can combine our strengths,” Keiji reached out his hand and laced his long fingers through Koutarou’s. “Although it would shock me a great deal if you were incapable of intimacy.”

“Well I’m pretty sure you know how to laugh, too,” Koutarou squeezed his hand tight. “Laughed at me for like twenty minutes the other day.”

Keiji relaxed his head and let it roll onto Koutarou’s shoulder, resting it there just softly. They lay there, staring at his water-stained ceiling and listening to the sound of his computer fan. And if Koutarou had been able to put into words what he imagined having a boyfriend would be like, it would be this minute, right now, with the side of Keiji’s glasses digging into his skin.

“Also,” Keiji nuzzled into him even closer, “It bears mentioning that I’ve worked my way up to three fingers. As there’s no lo- no longer a safety concern, I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to comfortably fuck me.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you livecement for betaing!
> 
> last update's on new year's eve!


	3. Chapter 3

Anal wasn’t a big deal.

That’s what Koutarou told himself over and over. It wasn’t! He’d had it plenty of times in plenty of ways. There wasn’t anything about it that made it that much better than any other kind of sex. And there were definitely drawbacks. It was easy to get hurt and easy for it to suck and once and awhile it was pretty gross by accident. But sex in general was weird and anal wasn’t any different.

Not a big deal.

But Koutarou couldn’t stop thinking about it, because it was a big deal to Keiji.

He thought about it all through work on Friday, dropping heavy pots on his feet by accident and overwatering marigold beds until his boss told him to take a walk around the block to clear his head. Practice wasn’t any better. He kept getting net touches and his serves were all out of bounds. He’d felt so frustrated that he’d buried his face in his hands and yelled.

But no one had gotten mad. Not at all. His boss had offered to give him Saturday off. His teammates had all joked with him in the locker room, acting like nothing was wrong.

And that was great because nothing _was_ wrong. Koutarou was just overthinking things and he didn’t even know why. Keiji wanted Koutarou to fuck him, Koutarou definitely wanted to fuck Keiji, so what was the big deal? 

It was just the first time Keiji had ever been on the bottom. That was all. Which wasn’t a big deal everyone had a first time and it was fine!

But Koutarou had never been anybody’s first anything. He’d always checked, and if something was new, he’d suggested they do something else. He couldn’t handle that kind of responsibility, of maybe ruining a thing for somebody. Now that somebody was Keiji, and the thought of making it anything less than amazing for him made Koutarou sick.

So really he’d come all the way back around to where he’d started two weeks ago.

The rest of Friday he didn’t have much going on. Keiji was helping his grandfather mow the lawn, Kuroo was working, and Oikawa had some kind of acting thing going on. Koutarou played Overwatch for awhile, but wasn’t really feeling it, so he ended up just lying on the couch on his stomach, arm dragging on the ground. It wasn’t a great idea to let himself feel like this too long or he’d end up stuck and sad, but he wanted to do the right thing and he didn’t know how.

He didn’t really know what the right thing was either.

His phone buzzed in his pocket three times before he answered it. Only two people ever called him — his mom and his grandmother. Probably the last people he wanted to talk to when he was agonizing over how he planned on giving it to his boyfriend, but he wasn’t going to ignore the call.

“Hi Mom,” he flipped onto his back, kicking his feet over the arm of the couch.

“ _Hi honey_ ,” she said. She sounded a little off. _“I hope I didn’t get you at a bad time.”_

“Nah,” he put his phone on speaker and started tossing it in the air and catching it. “How’s your day?”

“ _Oh, it’s fine!”_ She sounded like she was stressed really, but Koutarou wasn’t sure if he should bring that up. _“Just doing a bit of gardening. Your stepdad took the girls surfing so I could focus on my transcriptions and your brother’s off looking at bugs again. But how are you? Is practice going okay? How’s Keiji? Koutarou, I can hear you throwing your phone, it’s very distracting.”_

He caught it and sat it on his chest. “Sorry.” But she sounded like she was up to her usual nonsense, worrying about everybody but herself and he couldn’t let that go. “You havin’ a hard time?”

“ _Me? Oh no!_ ” She definitely was. “ _This woman’s voice just didn’t record well last month, and I was in a rush so I didn’t realize it at the time. Sadly, she passed away last week. So if I can’t get what I have down it’s lost forever. She was just… so excited to share._ ”

“You’ll figure it out!” Koutarou sat the phone on the floor, wedged his elbows under his upper body, lifted his legs straight up in the air, and started to kick them. Then he fell off the couch, banging his knee on the coffee table.

“ _Thank you, honey. But tell me about you. We haven’t talked since Saturday. I know you said you were okay in your texts, but I worry, you know?_ ”

“Yeah, I get it,” Koutarou said from the floor. “But everything’s cool! We just…” he couldn’t remember what he’d told her before, but it definitely wasn’t the whole truth, _“_ got in a fight, I guess. Never been in one of those before.”

“ _Won’t be the last, I’m afraid,”_ she laughed. She had a really loud laugh and hearing it made Koutarou feel a lot less worried about everything. He wished there was a way to talk to her about all this without bringing up anal.

Maybe there was.

“Hey, mom… how’d you like… decide you and Angelo wanted to have more kids?”

Her response was instant. 

“ _Koutarou, are you trying to tell me something?? Don’t think I don’t pay attention, I know some men can get pregnant!_ ”

“No no no!” he sat up, waving his arms even though she wasn’t even there. “Keiji… definitely can’t! Nobody’s pregnant! Nobody will ever be pregnant!”

She huffed into the phone, “ _Good. I’m not ready to be a grandma yet. I’m not even forty!_ ”

“I’ve got a bunch of stuff I wanna do myself,” Koutarou laid back down on the floor. There were pieces of something scattered all around the end table and he crawled over to look at them. They were chunks of the terrible Texas-shaped candle holder that Teru had insisted they have in the living room. Koutarou was glad it was smashed (he and Keiji had been the ones to smash it), but he wasn’t looking forward to Teru figuring out it was broken.

He was picking the pieces up just as his mom said the last thing Koutarou ever wanted her to say.

“ _I get it. It’s a sex thing.”_

This is what Keiji must have felt like before the prom. It had been all well and good when someone else’s mom was talking about sex, but when it was Koutarou’s own it was something else altogether.

“Mom!”

“ _I’m not wrong, am I?_ ” she laughed. He felt pretty bad about her laughter all of a sudden. “ _You obviously need to talk about it, if you’re using kids as an excuse to get advice from your mother._ ”

Yeah, but he didn’t know how to talk about it without bringing up anal.

“Just…” he sat the pieces on the table and then dug his fingers into his knees. “What do you do when somebody wants to do something that you don’t think he’s ready to do?”

“ _Well, honey, I don’t think you should be in a relationship with anybody who you need to make those kinds of decisions for._ ”

“…what?”

“ _I mean,”_ her voice got funny, probably because she was wedging the phone between her neck and her ear, _“if somebody isn’t enough of your peer to decide what he wants to do with his own body, then you shouldn’t be touching that body._ ”

“But it’s just a big deal and—”

“ _Who’s it a big deal to, Koutarou? Honey, look, I don’t really care what you get up to as long as you're safe. Just know that it’s okay for_ ** _you_** _to not want to do something too._ ”

 

That night he dreamed about it. Everything was going well until suddenly it wasn’t. Keiji wouldn’t look at him and the room got really big and everyone he knew was yelling him all at the same time. He woke up in a panic and sent Keiji a text asking if he was angry even though it was four in the morning.

Keiji responded almost immediately, which wasn’t as weird as it could be, since he didn’t sleep half the time.

>>i’m sorry you had a nightmare. i’m not angry with you.

Koutarou sat with his phone in his hands, trying to figure out what to say when Keiji texted him again.

>>i’d like to take you out to a nice dinner tomorrow.

>>although you will have to drive.

 

They stood in front of the gastropub in Sawtelle. Plan Check, it was called, although Koutarou didn’t really understand what a name like that could possibly mean. He hadn’t been to that many gastropubs. Maybe one or two. He didn’t have the money to eat out very often, and when he did it was usually tacos or pizza or a burger… or just takeout from one of the seven Chinese places within walking distance of his house.

Keiji had insisted that _he_ was taking Koutarou out, which was kind of nerve-wracking. Koutarou didn’t know the price range of the food on the menu so he had no idea what kind of thing he should order so he didn’t spend all of Keiji’s money. And there was probably some kind of toxic masculinity thing going on in his head since he felt like he had to pay because he was the dude. Only, they were both dudes. And Keiji was a rich kid, while Koutarou was broke all the time. So he really shouldn’t feel bad about it but he still did and consoled himself with the idea that he’d make Keiji tako poke and maybe some lomi lomi salmon the next time he got paid.

The line to get seated was long. Koutarou felt really out of place surrounded by a bunch of hip people wearing something other than shorts and ratty flip flops. Keiji looked like he belonged there, even though he was wearing that shirt that said “Volleyball Grandma” on it. They ended up in a split booth against a wall, right next to a table that a server was frantically clearing. Keiji took the booth side, and Koutarou slid into the chair, sighing as he stretched his legs.

“This place seems fancy. You ever been here before?”

Keiji looked over his menu, “No, I haven’t. But Akinori said it was very good.”

“When am I gonna get to meet those guys?”

“Soon, I hope. They plan on coming back in a week. That is, if they don’t fall off a waterfall.”

“I dunno, I haven’t been to Maui much but it seems like they’d have to try pretty hard to do that.”

Keiji hid behind his menu, which meant he was probably laughing a little, which meant Koutarou was a national hero. “Anyway, what do you think I should get? What does ‘cheese two ways’ mean? Like… some hard and some melted? Or—”

“Keiji?” a voice came from Koutarou’s left. He’d definitely heard it before but he couldn’t place it. He turned and two tables over were Tsukishima, his girlfriend, and his boyfriend. The girlfriend… her name was Yachi, Koutarou thought he remembered. The boyfriend was outta luck. Koutarou felt bad about not remembering his name, but he’d only met the guy once. Really he’d only met Tsukishima once too but then video games had happened.

“Hey guys!” he waved. They all waved back awkwardly, mouths full of sandwiches or fries. Tsukishima was kinda scowling and the boyfriend kicked him under the table. The guy was no Keiji but still pretty cute. Koutarou liked his freckles.

Then everything was really awkward. Those guys were definitely on a date and he and Keiji were too, and although they’d probably all like to talk together at some point, now was not that time. Thankfully the host was slowly squeezing through the people around the bar, leading some new customers to their table. And the only table available that Koutarou could see was the one between them and Tsukishima’s… crew. He didn’t know what else to call them, although that was almost definitely the wrong word.

The waitress popped by before the host made it through the bar. She was only asking about drinks, but Keiji insisted that she take their orders too. Koutarou wasn’t ready to order anything so he just picked the burger with the “cheese two ways.” Mostly to figure out what that meant.

He was handing his menu over his shoulder when Keiji made a strange noise. Koutarou turned back around and saw that Keiji’s face didn’t have much color anymore. He was looking past Koutarou at something. Probably some _one_ since there were so many people in the restaurant.

Koutarou swung around. Looking down at him was a blonde lady.

Next to her was Akaashi’s mom.

The host sat down their menus then ran off before they could tell her that this was definitely not where they wanted to sit. Because it couldn’t be where they wanted to sit. Definitely not.

“Mom?!?” Yachi cried out. 

The blonde lady pushed her way in between the tables and sat down. She looked really serious, like she should be wearing a purple business suit with shoulder pads. “Hitoka,” she turned to Yachi, “I’d like you to meet the woman I’ve been seeing for the past few months,” she gestured to Akaashi’s mom, “Emily Akaashi. Emily this is my daughter Hitoka and her… well… her boyfriends, Kei and Tadashi.”

This was not how anyone should meet anybody. It was super weird and Keiji’s flat face was flatter than normal. He probably wanted to leave. But they’d already ordered their food and were there rules for when you could leave a restaurant? They had to wait for their food or maybe they’d get arrested.

Dr. Akaashi smiled kind of crooked, like she was trying not to laugh.

“Madoka this is my son, Keiji, and his boyfriend, Koutarou. I would have liked to introduce you to Tetsurou as well, but he seems to have skipped out on this spontaneous family meeting.”

Koutarou waved, actually really, really wishing Kuroo was there. Keiji said hello to his mom’s girlfriend but he was sitting way too straight for it to seem very sincere. Then the waitress brought their drinks, interrupting everything and making it all seem even more awkward. While Koutarou was moving around to make space for her to put down his soda, he managed to fling his glass of water off the table and into Dr. Akaashi’s lap.

Ms. Yachi (probably, Koutarou didn’t actually know her last name) lifted her eyebrows. Yachi and Tadashi stared. Keiji’s eye started to twitch. Tsukishima was laughing, but into his hand so nobody noticed but Koutarou, who kinda wanted to punch him.

“Oh,” Dr. Akaashi said, blotting her napkin on her lap. “Well I suppose I should go dry off.” She stood up and patted Koutarou on the head before making her way to the bathroom. 

Koutarou stared at the table, feeling the room close in around him. The situation had been bad enough, and then he’d made it a million times worse. He was the worst, the absolute worst, he’d embarrassed Keiji and now Keiji’s mom was going to hate him and maybe they’d both hate him and the only one who’d like him anymore would be Kuroo but they wouldn’t be able to be friends because Kuroo was Keiji’s brother first and everything was ruined for—

“So, Ms… Yachi?” Keiji spoke up. Lifting his head, Koutarou looked across the table. Keiji’s hand was on his water glass and he was rhythmically tapping it with his finger. “What is it that you do for a living?”

“I run a small graphic design firm downtown,” she laid her menu on the table. Her fingers were really long and her nail polish had this perfect fancy design on it that she couldn’t have done herself. “I actually met your mother when one of her students interned in my office. I… didn’t fill out their paperwork in time. There are coordinators and the like to handle that sort of thing, but she called me directly. She was quite angry.”

“I’m not surprised,” Keiji said. And Koutarou’s eyes got big because that was maybe a sneaky little jab, or maybe he was just making fun of his mom? It was really hard to tell because he said it in such a level voice, and maybe that was the whole point, to be confusing.

At the other table, Tadashi was choking on his fries, Yachi was blinking rapidly, and Tsukishima was adjusting his glasses.

So Keiji was maybe being mean. But the funny part was he probably didn’t even realize how mean he was being. It was weird how aware he was of most things, but still didn’t get that being super honest all the time hurt people’s feelings. Koutarou didn’t mind much anymore because he knew that Keiji’s heart was in the right place.

But this lady didn’t.

A few minutes went by and Dr. Akaashi came back from the restroom. Her jeans were dark, so it was hard to even tell they were soaking wet. But Koutarou knew, and he apologized at least a dozen times because he really, really liked her and didn’t want her to think that he was an asshole or something. But she just leaned over, put her arm around him, and gave him a really tight side hug. He hadn’t thought that she was a very touchy person, so it made him feel a lot better.

Conversation went on a little better after that. Mostly because Dr. Akaashi spent a large part of it asking Yachi, Tadashi, and Tsukishima about their college plans. They all gave kind of shifty answers, and Ms. Yachi seemed to get really annoyed with them, so Dr. Akaashi changed the subject and started asking him about the team’s chances next year.

He… talked a lot after that. It wasn’t until he was going over their rivals’ really in-depth statistics with a mouthful of burger — apparently “cheese two ways” was just two types of cheese? why not just say that? — that he realized he was probably talking too much. He looked across the table at Keiji who was focused on his fried chicken, a tiny little smile on his face.

It wasn’t so bad then. Although they weren’t having much of a date. Really it had just been some high schoolers’ awkward future talk, and then extended college volleyball commentary. No one seemed to be enjoying themselves, and when Koutarou stopped talking to finish off his soda, the three tables fell silent.

“Can we get the check please?” Keiji called to the waitress. She had to be kind of far away because he pretty much yelled. The two of them had to be fast eaters because the crew’s table was still finishing up, and Ms. Yachi and Dr. Akaashi weren’t even halfway done. Dr. Akaashi was going to town on a full rack of ribs, and Koutarou decided he liked her even more than he already had. And that was already a lot.

Keiji’s card was out before the waitress even sat down the little clipboard that their check was on, and he sent her back to cash them out immediately. He didn’t seem upset, at least not outwardly, but Koutarou still wanted to get out of there as fast as he possibly could.

“So Keiji,” Ms. Yachi said, wiping her hands on her napkin, “Emily says you’re going to school for creative writing. What do you plan on doing with that?”

On Koutarou’s left, Dr. Akaashi shifted in her seat and sat down the rib she’d been chewing on. He could hear her take a deep breath, like she was just about to say something.

“Write,” Keiji said.

“Yes, of course,” Ms. Yachi turned in the booth so that she and Keiji were facing each other. “But your backup, in case that doesn’t work out.”

“I suppose I’ll just have to keep working at Starbucks,” he replied, face flat.

Tadashi choked on his water and Yachi made a small noise like a worried kitten. Tsukishima had his arms crossed and was leaning back in his chair like it was the best day in his entire life. Koutarou didn’t exactly know what was going on, but he kinda suspected that the two of them didn’t like their girlfriend’s mom very much.

“Keiji will be fine,” Dr. Akaashi said in this slow even voice that seemed like a mask to cover how angry she was. “And if he’s not, his brother will take care of him.”

Keiji scowled at his mom, who winked back at him. He took a deep breath, then turned back to Ms. Yachi.

“I understand that I am in a pri-privileged position. If I chose to not work and focus solely on my writing, my mother could easily support me. But that is not something that I choose to do.”

Ms. Yachi knew she’d fucked up. “Keiji, I apologize, I didn’t mean to imply that—”

“I have heard this line of thought many, many times. I plan to work for what I have, just as anyone else. Good wr……iting only comes with experience, and I will not get that living in my ch-childhood bedroom. I do not have a backup plan. I will learn how to write well, or I will work in food service for the rest of my life.”

No one said anything after that. Koutarou looked across the table at Keiji. He was still holding eye contact with Ms. Yachi, who looked really, really nervous. Koutarou couldn’t take his eyes off of him.

“Can I get you ladies anything else?” the waitress asked with a wide smile.

 

Koutarou made his way out of the restaurant, the crowd at the bar parting in front of him as he walked. Maybe he was even stomping, but it might have just been that he was kind of an enormous dude. Either way he had to get them away from those moms before he said something he couldn’t take back. Keiji’s hand was in his, his long, cool fingers tightening and loosening in Koutarou’s grip.

“Are you going to take me home?” he asked, sounding kinda confused. “Really, it was unnecessary to leave like that. She apologized.”

“We’re goin’ to my place,” Koutarou said, opening the passenger side door of the truck.

“Oh. Why?” Keiji bit his lip.

Koutarou backed him into the side of the truck, his mouth hovering next to his ear.

“I’m gonna give you what you’ve been askin’ for.”

Keiji exhaled raggedly, slapping his palms against the metal. Koutarou kissed him on the cheek, then walked around the front of the truck to get inside. Grabbing the wheel, he hoisted himself into the driver’s seat at the same time that Keiji climbed in on his side.

There was a long, heavy silence.

Koutarou started up the truck. They had a fifteen minute ride to get to his house, and since they weren’t making out, the sexiness of the atmosphere turned to nervous awkwardness real quick. Keiji was worrying his hands on his lap, and Koutarou kept gnawing on the inside of his mouth until finally—

“Far be it from me to complain about getting fucked in the ass, but why the sudden change of heart?”

After straightening the truck since he’d almost swerved into traffic, Koutarou cleared his throat. “Well, I talked to my mom some…”

“You talked… to your mom…”

“Okay Keiji don’t even start, because your mom gave me a whole fucking sex talk and I didn’t complain a single time.”

“That’s fair.”

Koutarou squeezed his hands around the steering wheel. “I’ve been worried. About… messin’ up your first time. But like…”

He swallowed.

“I don’t get to decide that for you. So if you’re sure about it, the person who’s not sure is me. And like… I’m scared I won’t do it right. But if I wanna do something, I gotta just get over my fear and go for it, the way you were talkin’ about your writing back there.”

“This is truly inspirational, Koutarou.”

“Can you not be a jackass for two seconds?”

“I suppose you’ll just have to fuck it out of me.”

And, wow, Keiji was being such a dick, but he’d also never sounded so happy before, so at the end of everything Koutarou didn’t mind very much.

 

“So,” Koutarou said.

They stood in his bedroom. They weren’t even on the bed yet. Just standing there. The bedside lamp was on and the shades were down, just letting in a little bit of the dusk light. It was a very nice atmosphere, excusing the pairs of Kotarou’s boxers and socks that were lying on the floor. He tried to sneakily kick them under his desk, but Keiji definitely noticed.

“So,” Keiji said.

Unlike the first time where he’d dressed all fancy, he was just in jeans (not his sexiest ones) and his Volleyball Grandma t-shirt. He had crumbs of fried chicken at the corner of his mouth, and Koutarou realized they hadn’t kissed since they left the restaurant.

So that’s what he started with.

Keiji did not taste like fried chicken, but he definitely tasted like coke. Koutarou hoped he tasted like soda too, or just… mouth. Something not gross. But Keiji was kissing him back so deeply that Koutarou either tasted fine, or Keiji just didn’t care. So he pressed their lips together, taking Keiji’s jaw in his hands and tipping up his chin.

Then he pulled back a little.

“I’m gonna make this amazing for you, Keiji, I promise.”

“I don’t need amazing. I just want you,” Keiji whispered against his mouth.

“Well, it’ll still be amazing, though! I can give you amazing!”

“Of course you can,” he laughed, puffs of air ghosting across Koutarou’s lips. Normally something like that would sound really sarcastic, but Koutarou didn’t feel like Keiji meant it that way at all.

His hands were on Koutarou’s waist, making their way under his shirt. Koutarou expected him to start working at his jeans immediately, but instead he just ran his fingernails up and down the small of his back. Each touch sent an electric pulse up Koutarou’s spine and made the hair on the nape of his neck stand on end. He broke their kiss and leaned his head on Keiji’s shoulder.

“I really like that.”

His voice was gravely even though he didn’t mean it to be.

Keiji tipped his head until his temple was pressed against Koutarou’s hair. “I thought that if you liked my fingernails on your scalp perhaps you’d like them other places.”

“Mmmmmmm,” Koutarou replied, leaning more of his weight against Keiji’s chest.

It was too much weight too fast and Keiji fell backwards, Koutarou on top of him. They landed halfway on the bed, halfway on the floor. Was that the same as throwing Keiji on the bed? Because he’d kind of liked that but also he seemed to not like it so much and Koutarou just wasn’t sure what he should do in a bed-throwing type situation. He lifted his head up from Keiji’s stomach only to see Keiji up on his elbows looking down at him, working his mouth like he was trying to swallow something down.

That was maybe because Koutarou’s face was right next to Keiji’s dick. Based on how his pants looked, he was mostly hard already. Sliding forward, he nuzzled Keiji’s crotch with his nose. Keiji took a deep shuddery breath and Koutarou met his eyes.

“Haven’t done this yet,” he grinned.

He probably should have taken Keiji’s pants all the way off, but there didn’t seem to be a need to. His jeans weren’t so tight that they were hard to unzip, and as soon as they were open he was tenting his tight yellow underwear right in Koutarou’s face. Koutarou slid his hands up and down the inside of Keiji’s thighs and looked up at his face again.

Keiji was biting down on his lip so hard that Koutarou couldn’t even see it anymore.

“This okay?” he asked, his hand hovering over the band of Keiji’s underwear.

“Yes, god yes,” Keiji let go of his lip long enough to hiss.

There didn’t seem any reason to wait, so Koutarou pulled down Keiji’s underwear, letting his cock spring up so it really _was_ in his face, bouncing against his nose. He blinked at it for a minute, then licked a stripe up the side to swirl his tongue around the tip. The sound Keiji made when he did that was sort of like a squeal, except it was happening in his throat. Koutarou had never heard anything like it, and it was kind of hilarious, but he didn’t want to laugh because Keiji was kind of sensitive about things like that.

It was really funny though.

When he took Keiji’s cock into his mouth, Keiji bit his hand and made a furious kind of noise around it. And Koutarou had given a lot of blowjobs in his life, but none had gotten this kind of reaction from the very beginning.

“Everything… still okay?” he pulled his mouth away.

Keiji seemed mad at first and then he caught himself and looked a little sheepish, which was a look Koutarou had never seen on his face before.

“I really like b-blowjobs,” he admitted. “And you seem to be quite good at it… er… them.”

“Oh _Keiji_ ,” Koutarou grabbed Keiji’s ass and yanked him to the edge of the bed. “You shoulda told me that a long time ago.” 

Since he wasn’t giving a blowjob to himself (he couldn’t do that, he’d tried _a lot_ ), he had no idea how good it actually was. But he was pulling out all the stops and he had a lot of experience, so statistically it was likely to be at least pretty okay.

“Oh fuck,” Keiji grunted, his hips immediately bucking into Koutarou’s mouth. Realizing he’d done that, he sat up, hands hovering over Koutarou’s head. He was as frantic and apologetic as Koutarou had ever seen him. But Koutarou just gave him a thumbs up with his free hand, and took one of Keiji’s hands to guide it into his hair. He could feel the gel crack as Keiji gently fisted the spikes.

“You can thrust a little and push down my head,” Koutarou pulled away, a strand of drool connecting his lips to Keiji’s cock. “I mean, don’t go fucking crazy! But yeah, let loose a little, I’ll stop you if it’s too much or somethin’.”

Keiji’s entire body stiffened.

“Is that okay?” Koutarou put a little bit more distance between his face and Keiji’s cock. “I mean, you don’t gotta do that if you don’t wanna. But I just thought.”

“It’s okay,” Keiji said. He looked kind of like he was going to explode. “It’s extraordinarily, perhaps even unbe-unbelievably okay.” 

“Mmmk,” Koutarou said before taking Keiji’s cock as deep as it would go.

“Koutarou!” Keiji yelped. “While I very… oh god… very much… _shit shit_ … like what you’re doing, I’m afraid I’m not going to — oh christ! — last much longer.”

Giving him another thumbs up, Koutarou didn’t stop. Keiji’s face was a pretty pink color, all the way out to his ears. His eyes were wide and the pupils were dark and he was panting as he very, very gently thrust into Koutarou’s mouth and pressed his head down just a little bit. He was being so polite and Koutarou could take it a lot rougher than he was getting, so he relaxed his soft palate as much as he could and took Keiji all the way down.

Koutarou had missed Keiji’s faces when he’d cum before, and he wasn’t going to miss it this time, so he looked up. Keiji was still on his elbows, in complete shock at what was going to happen. Then his eyes went wide, his face contorted as though he was in pain, and Koutarou felt the spurts of cum hit the back of his throat.

There was a thud, as Keiji fell backwards onto the bed.

Wiping his mouth as he swallowed, Koutarou threw himself onto the bed beside him.

“What did you think? Did you like it? I didn’t know you liked getting head so much Keiji, I woulda done it a long time ago.”

All he got in response was a tired noise, so Koutarou reached out and stroked Keiji’s cheek.

“I don’t know how you expect me to come again,” Keiji finally said.

“We’ll just take it slow!” Koutarou rolled on top of him. Keiji’s cock was still hanging out, so that was kind of a thing, but he was careful. He framed Keiji’s head with his elbows and tipped their foreheads together. “Is this what you wanted?”

“No,” Keiji said flatly.

“Akaaaa—”

“Although I’m also not complaining,” he ran his fingers through Koutarou’s hair, breaking up even more of the gel. “What would you like me to do?” he asked in a quieter voice.

Koutarou didn’t actually know. He was pretty hard at this point, and that was definitely something. But there was actually another thing.

“I’ve never heard you talk about your writing like that.”

Keiji scowled just a little, maybe in disappointment? And Koutarou didn’t mean he didn’t want to keep going, but it was just on his mind a whole lot.

“I don’t need to resort to that sort of thing with you,” Keiji slid back and sat up, tucking his cock away but leaving his pants unbuttoned. Koutarou rocked back onto his heels. They were making eye contact and Koutarou didn’t normally mind looking into Keiji’s eyes at all but this was intense.

“You’ve never once ac-acted as though I couldn’t do it.”

“Well, I’d be pretty fucking stupid to think that,” Koutarou felt like giving him a hug, but he thought that might be too much in the middle of a serious conversation.

Keiji’s face was expressionless, all but his eyes, which were so so soft. Koutarou was so distracted by them that he didn’t realize Keiji was pulling the hem of his Volleyball Grandma shirt up and over his head until it passed his eyes and ended up in a pile on the bed.

Since there was no sheer fabric to have to look through, Koutarou could see the darkness of Keiji’s nipples. They were cute, his whole chest was really nice. Koutarou didn’t really know why Keiji had been hiding it all this time, let alone why he’d suddenly decided not to hide it anymore.

Only… actually… he hadn’t been hiding his chest. He’d been hiding his—

Underneath him, Keiji’s legs turned as he rolled, lying on his stomach and revealing his back.

“If you say it looks like c……onstellations or some other bullshit, I’m going to leave.”

It didn’t look like constellations.

The acne scars on his back were terrible, thick red bumps and deep pits scattered from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, down till about where his ribs ended. And Koutarou should have realized, Keiji had told him about this, but he just hadn’t.

“It looks like it hurt a lot,” Koutarou said, not sure what kind of idiot would have said they looked like anything pretty. It wasn’t like they looked horrible or anything, but definitely not sparkly either.

Keiji rolled onto his back and sat up, pulling his legs under him. “It did.”

The super sexy atmosphere was gone, but Koutarou didn’t mind. He especially didn’t mind when Keiji leaned forward and kissed him slow and soft. He only bit a little, and even then it was more of a nibble than anything else.

“Thanks for trustin’ me,” he said when they stopped for a breath. “Can I take my shirt off too?”

Long fingers scratched at his back, searching for the hem of his shirt then pulling it up and over his head. Keiji pulled it to the front this time, so even though Koutarou’s arms were kind of tangled up in the fabric, it was easy to yank them loose.

They sat there on their knees, shirtless and face-to-face. The room was full of static.

“Keiji, I—”

Keiji’s kiss smashed all the thoughts out of his brain. He awkwardly wrapped his arms around Koutarou’s skull in kind of a weird sideways headlock. It bent one of Koutarou’s ears in an awkward way, but that was okay. He wrapped his hands around Keiji’s waist and pulled them closer together, bunching up the blankets under their knees.

The kiss was deep and desperate. Koutarou wasn’t really paying attention to what Keiji’s mouth tasted like, just the feel of his lips pressing against his, and his hands grabbing and pulling at his hair. He was pushy, just like the first time they’d tried, but his pushiness didn’t feel like he just wanted to get things over with. It was different from that. More needy. 

Koutarou felt wanted.

He squeezed his fingers tighter around Keiji’s waist and Keiji whimpered into his mouth, pulling him even closer until their noses were knocking together. Koutarou fell sideways and pulled Keiji on top of him. Their cocks were rubbing against each other through Koutarou’s shorts, and Keiji wrapped his legs around his until they were completely twisted together.

“I need to get off or I’m gonna cum right away when we do it,” Koutarou said into Keiji’s neck. His voice was like sandpaper.

But he didn’t have to ask twice.

Keiji slid down him and knelt over his knees, unzipping his shorts and pulling them down along with his underwear in one smooth tug. Koutarou’s mostly-hard cock sprung free and Keiji just sort of stared at it for a little. He’d really only seen it once (or twice maybe), and he hadn’t really taken much of a look before he’d started sucking it, so maybe now he wanted the full experience.

“I’ve never actually seen someone who wasn’t cut before,” he admitted, reaching out to touch the foreskin and gently play with it. “Except in porn.”

“Well, what you’re doin’ now feels really great,” Koutarou tried to sound encouraging instead of just desperate. “You can definitely keep doing that, if you want. Yeah, definitely that.”

Keiji stopped doing that.

“Where’s your lube?”

In sort of a leaping roll, Koutarou reached his bedside drawer, accidentally knocking a water glass onto the floor. It was actually plastic so not a big deal, especially since the water splashed all over his dirty gym shorts instead of soaking into the floor. There was a plug in the drawer next to the lube but he just left it there. If that was something Keiji was into they could talk about that later.

He turned to slide back down the bed but Keiji was right there, only wearing his yellow underwear. His eyes were glowing in the low light and he pushed Koutarou onto his back with one hand, taking the lube in the other.

“I still believe you have a thing for handjobs,” he said, pouring lube into his hand.

The fact was that Koutarou did.

“I think you like them because your partner is only paying attention to you,” Keiji wrapped his hand around his cock and gently stroked up and down. “And they can talk to you while they do it.”

“That makes me sound pretty selfish there, Keiji,” Koutarou said, kind of strangled because Keiji was using the tips of his fingers to play with his foreskin again. Only his fingers were all lubed up and his hand was really gentle and _fuck fuck fuck_. 

“I don’t think that at all,” Keiji slid his hand back down and started to jerk him faster. “You’re incredibly ge-generous. But you also like attention.”

His other hand hand slid down to play with Koutarou’s balls.

“A lot.”

Koutarou arched back on the bed as Keiji worked him. He would have splayed his legs but they were still trapped by his shorts.

“I’m eager to see you play,” Keiji tightened his hand. “All of this power focu-focused on a single goal. I want to see you like that and know that you’re mine.”

It was probably a good idea that they had done this first because Koutarou came embarrassingly fast. The cum splattered on his stomach, getting caught in the little hairs under his bellybutton.

“You have an outie,” Keiji pressed on it, getting cum on his fingers.

Koutarou reached down on the floor and pulled up his wet gym shorts to sloppily wipe the cum away. He held them up for Keiji to wipe his fingers on, but Keiji put his fingers in his mouth instead. He definitely regretted that a lot, but was too proud to say it. Koutarou pulled him into his arms, and brushed the hair off of his forehead.

“Holy _fuck_ , Keiji. Where did you learn to do that?” 

“There are quite a few resources online,” Keiji crossed his arms on Koutarou’s chest and sat his chin on them.

“Yeah, but the talking part?”

“I tried to pay more attention.”

Koutarou felt the hot tears flood his eyes more quickly than he could blink them away. To keep Keiji from seeing them, he pulled him in close, tucking his head into his neck. Hopefully Keiji didn’t notice him crying on his hair.

“I love you,” he muttered, trying to keep his voice from betraying him.

“I don’t think there’s a world that exists where I wouldn’t fall in love with you, Koutarou.”

That did it. He started crying for real and it was really fucking embarrassing but Keiji just held him tighter and kissed his neck really gentle and if Koutarou had to cry about being in love with somebody he was glad it was Keiji. He really couldn’t imagine it being anybody else.

Eventually he calmed down a little. At that point Keiji had lifted his head and ran his fingernails across Koutarou’s scalp until his hair wasn’t standing up at all anymore.

“Sorry,” Koutarou sniffled. “Crying isn’t very sexy.”

“Strange,” Keiji hummed. “Because I’m still desperate for you to fuck me.”

Something that had been strung up tight for a long time finally snapped.

Koutarou flipped Keiji onto his back. He’d always tried not to be intense, always calm, always letting Keiji come to him. But he couldn’t hold back, the intimacy of the moment was so much. He’d never felt anything like it before.

Keiji was his and he wanted to have him.

He brought his hand to Keiji’s jaw and lowered his lips to kiss him but Keiji met him halfway. The kiss was sloppy and wet and maybe that was all the stupid tears that were still drying on Koutarou’s face. It tasted like cum too. But it didn’t matter, because Keiji’s hands slid down Koutarou’s back and grabbed his ass. Koutarou kinda wanted to straddle him, but he couldn’t because his shorts were still wrapped around his calves. So he just rocked into him, and kissed down his neck. He was kissing too hard and using his teeth and he was probably going to leave marks but he didn’t care.

“Tell me how much you want it.”

Underneath him, Keiji’s chest shuddered. “I don’t know what else I could pos-possibly tell you. I’ve been n…….early begging for two weeks.”

“Beg again.”

His hands let go of Koutarou’s ass and instead his fingernails dragged all the way up his back until they were grazing against the buzzed part of Koutarou’s head.

“Please fuck me, Koutarou.”

He rolled off of him, ripping off his shorts and then going for Keiji’s underwear, pulling the band up and then down as he yanked them to his feet. Then they sat there, completely naked together for the first time. Koutarou was so turned on he didn’t even remember what came next, so he just pulled Keiji to him and they lay on their sides, devouring each other. Koutarou slid his hand across Keiji’s side and down to his ass, until he was very lightly teasing at his hole with the tip of his pointer finger.

“You said… you said you’ve been prepping yourself?” he panted between kisses.

Keiji made a weird, sexy little noise as Koutarou played with him, and it must have made it hard to answer because all he did was nod. Koutarou had to stop what he was doing, but he propped himself up and reached across the bed to grab the lube, pouring it all over both his hands.

“You gotta tell me if this hurts any more than a little,” he closed the bottle and tossed it back on the bed where he could reach it. “Promise you will, Keiji?”

“Yes,” Keiji finally answered, “I’ll tell you, but just do it Koutarou.”

Koutarou took a deep breath to clear his head, then lowered himself back down so they were facing each other, holding up his lubey hands hoping they didn’t drip all over the place. “I’m not gonna hurt you cause you’re impatient! Now,” he scooted down a little and lowered his hand, feeling around for the crack and then sliding his fingers down it, “you gotta tell me if it hurts.”

It was a weird sort of thing, looking straight in someone’s eyes when you pressed your finger in his ass, but it was the sort of thing Koutarou was glad he was doing. Keiji’s pupils got huge, and he was looking everywhere but Koutarou’s eyes, which meant he ended up looking in his eyes every few seconds. He was shaking, and Koutarou wasn’t sure if it was nerves or from feeling good or what it was, but he slid his other hand between them, wrapping his fingers around Keiji’s cock to jerk him smooth and slow.

“How’s it feel?” he asked when he’d pressed his finger in deep enough.

Keiji was writhing, and what made it even worse (or kinda better) was that he was trying to hide the fact that he was by gnawing on the inside of his cheek and clenching his jaw.

“Strange,” he finally said. “But good. You can- you can do more. But you have to slow down your hand or…”

Gently pressing in with another finger, Koutarou slowed down. “This okay?”

Keiji bit his lip and nodded, snapping back his head when both fingers were in all the way. The veins in his neck stood out when Koutarou started to stretch him, and really, Koutarou was kinda worried that he was in pain.

“You promised, Keiji…”

“It doesn’t hurt!” he nearly yelped. “It’s a… very stra- very strange feeling, and overwhelming when you’re also…”

He waited a minute and Keiji didn’t say anything for a long time.

“Okay, I’m gonna put the last one in now.” 

Keiji’s breath shuddered and he pressed his forehead into Koutarou’s shoulder.

“That… it hurts somewhat.” Koutarou stopped moving. “Your fingers are thicker than mine.” He made to pull out but Keiji stopped him, telling him to go slower.

The third finger went in so slow Koutarou wasn’t really sure if his hand was moving. He wished he had a third hand to rub Keiji’s back, but instead he tried to comfort his cock. Which was maybe not the best move, but it was the most distracting thing he could do. Eventually his fingers were sliding in and out easily, and Keiji was rocking in time with the motion. His cock was incredibly hard, and Koutarou had to slow down even further or he was going to get him off just like that.

Pulling his fingers away, he tipped up his head and kissed Keiji softly. He was kind of a mess, with tears at the corners of his eyes and a blush all the way down to his nipples. The way he was trying to keep himself together made him look like even more of a mess than he was.

Koutarou kissed him again, deeper this time.

“Do you still want this?”

Keiji’s eyes narrowed.

“If you won’t fuck me, I’m going to find the first person on the street who will.”

Hardee har har.

 

“You want to do it like this?” Keiji demanded, lying with a pillow under his stomach. They probably should have talked this over a little bit more before actually getting down to it, but there was no way Koutarou was going to fuck him in any other position.

“This way is the easiest on you!” Koutarou reached in his bedside drawer for a condom. “I’m still worried about hurtin’ you. Plus you look fucking hot like that.”

Keiji leaned on his elbow and looked over his shoulder, just proving his point. He looked good enough to eat, but also unconvinced.

“We’ll still be able to kiss and stuff. I’m not a lot taller than you, but tall enough. And if you want we can face the mirror? That’s always kinda ho—”

“No.”

“Okay then!” Hopefully he’d want to another time, but Koutarou wasn’t going to push him. Anyway, the mood was kind of ruined, so he had to fix that first. Sitting the condom aside he slid up Keiji’s body, until his face was resting in the crook of his neck. He was so hard that it kinda hurt to be squashed against Keiji’s ass like that, but he was patient.

“See?” he stretched forward so their faces were even. “We can still kiss like this, it’s just like our necks are on their tiptoes.”

Keiji tested it out, reaching his hand out to caress Koutarou’s cheek. Kissing was a stretch, but Koutarou was rutting against Keiji in no time. He reached out to the bed, scrambling for the condom, then had to pull away to put it on and slather it with lube.

This was the sexiest point, where he was supposed to rock Keiji’s world. But it was all just logistics and lining up and sliding in and trying not to hurt him and…

He was overthinking this. He needed to just do it.

Holding himself steady, he slid between Keiji’s cheeks, lining himself up. Then as carefully as he could, he pushed inside. It would have been awesome if they’d been in front of a mirror because then he could see the face that Keiji was making. As it was, he just saw him grab the blankets in his hands and snap his head back. The noise he made was something close to a guttural squawk.

“This okay?” Koutarou really wished he could see his face, actually. Maybe this was a bad position after all. The head wasn’t even all the way in and Keiji was already reacting so—

“It’s fine,” Keiji whispered. “Please don’t stop.”

Koutarou eased his chest forward without pressing much deeper, until he was hovering over Keiji’s shoulders. Using his arms as a lever he slowly pushed inside. By the time he was halfway in, Keiji was clenching and unclenching the blankets in his hands.

He was so tight. And he was pushing back, like he wanted more, and Koutarou didn’t want to rush, but Keiji was rushing him.

“You’re gonna fucking kill me,” he said, head hanging close to Keiji’s ear. He didn’t expect him to swing around, capturing his lips in a deep kiss. But he did, and Koutarou felt himself pressing even deeper until he was completely seated inside him. 

Even though he’d already cum, he was still dangerously close the minute he started moving. Keiji wasn’t helping, making desperate noises underneath him. The angle was almost too good, so he was shifting himself a little to make it just a bit harder to move when the worst thing that could possibly happen, happened.

The sound was so loud. And although Keiji had probably heard of the word queef before he probably hadn’t ever experienced one. Because he was a graceful, classy person who didn’t squish air into someone’s ass with his dick.

Underneath him, Keiji stiffened completely.

“It’s alright!” Koutarou said, feeling the exact opposite. “It’s just a thing that happens sometimes! I know you didn’t like… I mean, even if you did it wouldn’t be the worst thing ever that happens sometimes too. Sex is just a mess, and anal is probably the biggest mess, and…”

He probably wasn’t helping.

Keiji wasn’t calming down though, he had started shaking and pressing his face into his arm. Koutarou was still balls-deep inside him and maybe he shouldn’t be anymore. Really this was a situation he hadn’t really been ready to negotiate and—

Throwing back his head, Keiji let out the most obnoxious bark of laughter Koutarou had ever heard.

The relief was too much, and he fell down on Keiji’s back with a huff. After about three seconds, he started laughing himself, partially at what happened, partially because Keiji sounded ridiculous, and also just a little bit in relief. He was still insanely hard, and the combination of shaking his own body and the tightening of Keiji’s ass every time he laughed wasn’t doing anything to make his boner go away.

Eventually, Keiji calmed down a little and looked over his shoulder at Koutarou. Fat tears were running down his cheeks and his eyelashes were clumped together. His pupils were huge.

“Please stop taking it so easy on me, Koutarou. I sincerely want to be fucked. I will tell you if it hurts. I will tell you im-immediately and I will tell you in no uncertain terms. But I want you to fuck me. Hard.”

Koutarou swallowed.

“Are you going to tr……ust me? Are you going to give me what I want?”

Instead of answering, he sat back, picked up the lube, and filled his palm. Then, propping himself up on one elbow, he reached behind the pillow and fisted Keiji’s dick.

“I’m gonna keep gettin’ faster,” he started slowly rolling his hips. “You gotta say if it’s too much, otherwise I won’t slow down till you cum.”

Keiji looked over his shoulder and scowled.

“Okay, till _I_ cum.”

He did what Keiji asked.

The pace was supposed to start out really slow, but Keiji’s ass was so tight and it just felt so good that before Koutarou knew it, he was fucking him faster than he realized and harder than he planned. All of his weight was on his single elbow while he steadily jerked Keiji off with the other hand. They couldn’t even kiss without Koutarou falling over so he just leaned close to Keiji’s ear and kissed his shoulder blade as softly as he could.

“Is this what you wanted?” he asked.

Keiji turned his head and he was just out of reach, but that didn’t mean Koutarou couldn’t see him. His face was completely red, tears streaming out of the corners of his eyes. He didn’t seem to be able to close this mouth, and he made these tiny satisfied grunts every time Koutarou snapped his hips forward.

“I’m sorry I made you wait for so long, baby,” he looked in Keiji’s eyes and stroked his dick even faster. “From now on I’m gonna fuck you whenever you want.”

Keiji’s eyes got big and he jerked in Koutarou’s hands. It took a second for Koutarou to realize he was coming. And that realization alone was enough to send Koutarou over the edge. He curled tightly over Keiji, holding him close as he rode out his own orgasm, coming deep inside him.

 

They weren’t talking.

It wasn’t like that, though. Once Koutaoru had tied off the condom, he collapsed on the bed next to Keiji and Keiji had rolled right into his arms. They were both sweaty. It was sticky and then it was a little chilly as the sweat dried. But Koutarou wasn’t about to move when Keiji’s head was resting on his bicep and his face was buried in Koutarou’s chest.

“You were right,” he said eventually. And Koutarou liked being right, he liked to remind people when he was, but he’d been pretty worried that he’d hurt Keiji and he really did not want to be right about that. His mouth was opening and closing, trying to figure out what to say, when Keiji looked up.

“It was amazing.”

Koutarou wrapped his arms around him and squeezed tight. He still didn’t know what to say, which was weird, but there were a lot of thoughts in his head and he didn’t know what order to make them come out. Keiji tucked his face into Koutarou’s chest again, and Koutarou put his chin on his head.

Things were quiet again until Keiji said, “I’m not looking forward to the start of classes.”

Koutarou hadn’t really expected Keiji to say that. So he said the first thing that came to his mind.

“But you already took some classes! And you did fucking great!”

Pulling himself free of Koutarou’s arms, Keiji sat up. “It’s not the classes I’m concerned about. Well, I suppose I am worried about my first creative writing course, but that is something I’m going to have to get used to.”

“Then what?”

When Keiji’s hands started worrying, Koutarou started to feel concerned. When Keiji didn’t say anything for a really long time, Koutarou started to feel pretty awful.

“I know the distance between us isn’t much. But you have a large course load and practice and work. I don’t have a car…”

His adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. 

The solution was pretty obvious. “I’ll come and visit every weekend!”

“No,” Keiji turned, eyes serious. “You won’t. That’s what I’m concerned about. I won’t have you sabotaging yourself on my behalf. I don’t know what the right choice is in this situation. Sometimes I think we should—”

Koutarou grabbed his shoulders, “Have a little faith in me, Keiji.”

Keiji’s eyebrows were still furrowed.

“I live an ocean away from almost everybody I love! I can’t even afford to go visit em on break. We make it work. You and me, _we’ll_ make it work!”

“I’m also… going to miss you,” Keiji dropped his eyes to tell his chest.

Wrapping his arms around Keiji’s shoulders, Koutarou pulled them close. They were still naked, and they’d been naked together for a really long time. It was the longest Koutarou had ever sat naked with someone he wasn’t in the middle of having sex with.

“Me too.”

 

“Yes Koutarou, I’m excited too but please remember that I have to write a thousand words by Monday, so I’ll have to take some time to focus.”

Koutarou leaned forward, as though being closer to the screen would bring them closer together in real life. “That’s okay, I’ve gotta go for runs and stuff! And I have a bunch of proofs to finish. We can go to the library together! Or a coffee shop! I’ve never done anything in a coffee shop before.”

It was nice when Keiji smiled always, but when he smiled on video chat it was also kind of frustrating because Koutarou just wanted to kiss him but he couldn’t.

“I’m sure we’ll come up with an appropriate solution. I need to go now before the dining hall closes.”

Koutarou’s goodbyes were on his lips and his hand was hovering over the trackpad on his laptop when Keiji remembered something.

“I forgot to mention: Ethan is going back to San Diego for the weekend. We’ll have the room to ourselves.”

He wanted to see Keiji more than he wanted to have sex. He wanted to take him in his arms and kiss his forehead and hold hands and tell him how much he loved him. Every one of those things were better than sex. But, now that sex was on the table…

“A golden opportunity,” Keiji’s cheeks turned pink, “if you’ve grown tired of waiting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to liv once again for their beta work. especially for this chapter which had a very short turnaround time. 
> 
> thank you everyone for reading this story. it means so much that you took the time. i'm sorry i don't reply to comments very much - i just get so anxious. but please know that i read them over and over again.


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